Playing cards wasn't so much a ritual as it was a recurrent time-waster - a decent way to spend one of the many lazy nights that blinked by without battles or recon missions or any of the other meticulously menial tasks that they were sent on as RED's resident lab rats. Some of the boys would pull up a couple of chairs in the so-called "Recreation Room" (which had really just become yet another storage room with the occasional card-table gathering thrown in for good measure) and deal out their hands, betting boyish things like bottle-caps and baseball cards some days and, on especially slow nights, putting weaponry and bravado dares on the line. On some levels it was just another excuse to socialize - to pretend to be normal twenty, thirty, and fortysomethings and trade tales with the men they had been trapped here with for so long - but more than anything it was about getting through the night without a truly violent outburst or, god forbid, a suicide. Nights like those had happened, on eerily quiet evenings with jittery rookies and wizened old classes alike, and the terrifyingly somber veil that draped over the base after them got worse and worse every time.
The past couple evenings of poker games had taken a startlingly social turn, though, and the conversation, like all closed-door conversations around the base, had turned ever so quickly to the one thing they just couldn't seem to wrap their minds around no matter how hard they tried.
"Havin' a lady 'round ain't so bad," Engie sighed loftily, pushing a towering stack of two year-old magazines onto the betting table. "She gives this place a kind of domestic charm, dontcha think?" Heavy gave a bellowing laugh in reply, seeing his magazines with a few scattered gun parts, rusted and bent like practiced yoginis.
"Plus she is not so bad to look at, ya?" Scout cringed instinctively, fingers clamping around the cards in his hand until his knuckles blanched. He bit his lip until he nearly drew blood he fought back the primal urge to take a baseball bat to his own teammate's skull. These late night roundtables used to be the only decent way to share a laugh with the boys - to trade battlefield triumphs and throw in a few sly insults about their matching opponents for good measure - but now that conversation had consistently gravitated towards the new center of their tiny little world he found each game to be more like a test of inner strength than a casual social circle. Eyes locked firmly on the cards before him, he fought to keep his mouth shut - an intensely monumental task for a brash and, as he discovered, exceedingly protective delinquent from the South side of Boston - and with a passive-aggressive nod he let the conversation neatly breeze over him, firmly planting a couple of stray sports section clippings from various newspapers into the betting pile. Sniper's eyes locked on his unusually stiff teammate with a curious glance, yet without missing a beat he picked up the sudden lull in conversation and brushed it off neatly in that quaintly non-threatening way he always had been so skilled at. Scout often wondered why he hadn't become a Spy and chose sniping instead - why he took to the second story parapet, taking out his enemies like a vapor over the field, never once disclosing even the slightest hint of his presence. It was such a departure from his personality off the field - the way he carried himself, the way he talked, easy-going but with a curiously genuine twang that made him a little too easy to trust. He had that edge of an unintentionally social beast, a low-key charmer, and that was one of those characteristics that Scout had always assumed would extend to how he fought. It never did, though - instead he kept his strange charisma to himself when killing his enemies, and Scout had realized early on that he recognized Sniper's unique mannerisms from the grifters and frauds that would swindle marks on the Boston streets with a low bow and a coy hello. He was the perfect con man, despite never once attempting a con in all of the years he had been trapped on the base, but then again who could tell what he really did out there in the great wide outside world - the histories of the boys inside the base extended only to what they were willing to share. Sniper could have been a gun-slinging veterinarian for all they knew.
"Say what you will, mates, but I don't completely trust a story as suspicious as hers." He purred low. Pulling a cigarette from a pack on the table next to him, he stuffed it neatly in the corner of his mouth before tossing the rest of the pack into the ever-growing pile of betted goods. "Sure, she's a nice lass and all and rookies turn up that mysteriously all the time, but only when one of us blokes bites the dust. There are only replacements, not additions."
"Perhaps she's a new class, then?" Demo smiled, taking a deep gulp of whiskey. He gave a hearty cough as the burning of the alcohol seared his already-inflamed throat, giving a second glance at his cards before throwing them down in a disgusted fold.
"She ain't no goddamned class," Scout interjected with a compulsively smarmy pout. "She's just some girl that those sick fucks at RED used and threw away, just like the rest of us."
"Kid's right," Engie offered. "RED ain't stupid enough to put a girl in battle." He took a swig of beer, sloshing it around in the bottle to savor the taste, and laid down two pairs with a soft smack. "Plus, if she was a recruit logic says they woulda trained 'er first. Nobody flies in here blind." Demo gave a sudden cheer of agreement, as though such a thought hadn't occurred to him.
"E's got a point! Even us dogged saps had a wee bit 'o training before bein' left in this hell hole."
"Ve are being very harsh to leetle girl." Heavy added, ignoring the glances of his teammates as their attention drew directly above his head. Scout visibly blanched, hiding his face behind his cards in a less-than-discrete attempt to hide his discomfort, and, carelessly oblivious as usual, with a harmless smile Heavy continued.
"I see no problem. No battles. No training. She is just lost girl, left like us, like leetle man say." He motioned towards Scout, who was now under the table inspecting the table's leg with an exaggerated curiosity, mumbling about how goddamned wobbly it was and how someone should really fix it one of these days. "No more." Sniper gave a suggestive nod towards the hall behind him, and with a slow turn Heavy wheeled away from his card game. Penny stood in the doorway, arms akimbo, and faced the boys before her with a satisfied sigh.
"See?" Heavy bellowed, pointing in her direction. "She is fine. Has not killed us yet." Penny politely ignored the Russian's cruel commentary and met eyes with every single boy at the table (save for the still-preoccupied Scout), smiling entirely innocently the way only terribly naughty girls can.
"Evening, boys." She clapped her hands together with a sharp slap, rubbing them with an added maniacal twist. "So," she purred, sweet as apple pie. "Who's going to teach me how to battle?"
Scout shot up, slamming his head against the underside of the table with a loud thwack and an uncensored curse. With a second try, this one slower, he pulled himself up again and sat upright, and after checking the back of his now bruised head for blood he gave the girl before him a bewildered double take. The rest of the room sulked into a stunned silence, punctuated only by an underhanded scoff or two from one of the boys, and, the first one to move, Demo slumped back in his chair, half-empty bottle of whiskey sloshing in hand, and shot her an alcohol induced grin.
"Whatcha need to know that for, girlie?" He cooed, daring a smirk. "You gonna take down BLU's in-between yer knittin'?" Scout growled a low "Cool it, cyclops", yet Penny stood unfazed, granting the drunk Scotsman the courtesy of a confident glance.
"Something like that."
"Leetle girls do not shoot guns." Heavy stated with a flat nod as though this was something he had read in a textbook so long ago and unconditionally accepted to be a fact. He preoccupied himself by thumbing through his hand with that same lumbering meticulous while Penny snapped to his direction.
"This one does." She retorted with a quick flicker, adding a mild caveat on second thought. "Or will, I guess. That's the point. Regardless, I'm asking nicely so who's it gonna be, boys?" She grazed over the four blank faces before her, each trying their hardest to look the other way and, like students hoping desperately to not be called on by teacher, no one met her glance. Scout shot up instantly, stumbling from his place at the table towards her with a saunter and a few quick hops, and grabbing and pulling her quickly by the arm back out of the smoky room and into the hall he called a sharp "We'll be right back!" over his shoulder. Once far enough beyond the still-open door of the rec room he pulled her aside, meeting her confused expression with an exasperated sense of fret, and checking the nearby doorway to be sure no curious onlookers had followed them out, he whispered with a loud fluster.
"Penny, dahlin', ya crazy? You tryin' to get yourself killed?"
"I'm trying," she moaned, tapping him lightly on the chest, "to be of some real use around here."
"Whaddya mean 'use'? You're of plenty of use! You do just about everything that we're too stupid to do ourselves - sweepin', sewin', you name it! You're the queen of the castle, toots." She shook out her head with a laugh.
"Oh god, don't you get it? Those are exactly the kinds of things that I was told to do back home. Clean this, cook that - it's a man's world, Penny, so do your best to be good enough for one. It's not for me - it never was. It's busywork for girls with more delicate sensibilities and I want something more. Scout, teach me. Show me how to be a part of this. Please. I want to be out there with you and everyone else and I need someone to show me the ropes, and if anyone could do that you could." He froze, staring back at her pleading eyes with the rattling pain of a heavy decision - it was either teach her everything she wanted to know, spend every day with her without worrying or whispering or constantly looking over his shoulder to be sure no one was scrutinizing their already close relationship, and then let her loose on the battlefield to face the one thing he had bit his nails over the most, or say no, break his own already unhinged heart and her trust in him, but keep her indefinitely safe - keep her away from the BLU team's killers and psychopaths a mere hundred yards away. He shifted from foot to foot nervously, palms massaging his temples in quick circles, and with a jittery groan he pulled himself back into those doe eyes of hers. She gazed up at him, begging, pleading, smiling expectantly the way she always did even during the most serious of times, and while his head exploded with a fireworks show of neurons shaking his mouth into saying yes, his heart rumbled with the echo of a no, of a never.
"I'll do it." A thick snap of a voice rang out from behind them, and Penny turned in slow surprise to face the one man that she would have never expected to meet her already quixotic request - the only person on the base who had ignored her, avoided her, never even cast a glance in her direction since the day she had arrived, and yet here he was, standing before them both with a casual smile and a lit cigarette. The Spy flicked the ashes from his hand before swiftly snubbing his smoke out against the wall, meeting her gaze directly for the very first time. His eyes were much bluer than she would have expected, but nevertheless they gave no hints when it came to his perpetually mysterious intentions. He directed a slick smirk towards Scout, eyes already locked dangerously on the lanky Frenchman, and for the first time since the sly bastard had first arrived a month ago Scout found himself seriously considering sending him back to his maker.
"Ze girl wants to defend, let her defend." He continued with a meandering drawl. "I will teach her how to shoot. Starting tomorrow morning." His gaze drifted back down to Penny, and for a brief moment it gained a fiercer edge. "I trust you to be punctual, fille."
"Yes, sir." She hummed sweetly, eyeing him with a steady curiosity as he produced a polished cigarette case from the folds of his jacket and quickly lit up with one practiced movement.
"Go, then." He growled, suddenly refusing to meet her gaze yet again. "You will need rest in order to zurvive tomorrow." Penny faltered every so slightly, freezing between steps backwards, but nodded nonetheless and turned to leave with a modest goodbye to Scout. He watched her go, eyes following her perpetually girlish sway as she trotted down the hall and rounded a corner, but when he finally drew his attention back to Spy he found him too leaving, already halfway down the hall and with no clear intentions of speaking to the seething all-star.
"Yo, Frenchie!" He called, trotting up to him with an exasperated shout. He threw his arms out wide with an intimidating shrug. "What the hell d'ya think ya doin'?" Spy turned from his steady pace and gave him a perfunctory glance, eyes washing over the disheveled boy with a full sweep. Hair a tousled mess and shirt untucked - if he didn't know any better he would have assumed that he was being jumped. But that was the lovely thing about the base, really; after a while everyone revolved right back to who they used to be, no matter how long they had been trapped inside the gates and walls. Scout's criminal record, although never once addressed by anyone, had never really been a question - it simply was.
"Going back to my room. What does it look like, trou duc'?"
"Oh, you damn well know what I mean." he spat, kicking at the nearest wall with a heavy thunk.
"Ah, well isn't it obvious?" He cooed, exhaling a hot trail of smoke. "Giving votre fille what you won't - a chance."
"Voh-trah what? And don't you even pull that shit with me because I would have done it! If you hadn't strolled in here and fucked everything up I would have given her what she wanted and convinced her not to go out there whenever the next call goes out, so thanks a fucking lot you piece of shit!" Spy laughed, a genuine howl which only exacerbated Scout's already battle-hungry nerves, and as he turned to face him completely he realized just how simple it would be to deck him with an uppercut and curb stomp his teeth out right then and there. The thought chilled him.
"Why are you zo insistent that she ztay here and play house all day? All ze rest of us have to play zees war games when the time comes, and as you zay so often, she's one of us, non?" Scout's scowl twitched lightly, flickering halfway between stumbling surprise and unbridled bloodlust.
"The field's a fuckin' dangerous place. And, ya damn dumb-asses, has nobody thought about what BLU'll do if they see 'er? When they find out we're housin' a girl over here? Y'all are just stupid if you haven't considered that." He paused, clicking his jaw with a contemplatively low snap. Don't get too emotional about her, he reminded himself. Play it cool - don't let on. "It's just not right, man. She don't belong out there and you damn well know it. " Spy shout out a low laugh, taking another neat drag on his cigarette.
"You are living in a dreamworld, polichinelle. Oblivious as usual." He flicked the last of his smoke onto the floor, extinguishing it with a practiced twist of the heel that left only ashes behind. "Put your boyish thrills aside for a moment and consider what votre fille wants. She follows you and ze others around endlessly, watching. She ees transfixed when you even mention battle, for god's sake. Ze girl wants a part of ze action so stop being so fucking stubborn because even if you try to ztop her she'll still find a way out." He growled, exhaling a billow of smoke in the boy's already flushed face. "And I have no qualms about helping her."
"She can't go out there!" His sudden scream, a frenzied explosion of emotion, knocked his teammate back into a curiously humble silence. "You fucking idiots and your treatin' her like 'one of the boys'! She's not like us, okay! She's nothing like us! That field is a fuckin' dangerous place and no girl belongs there!" He panted lightly, suddenly realizing that he had been screaming the whole time, and with an intense glare he lowered his voice to a fierce hiss. "I'd rather die than see her even step one foot onto the battlefield."
And, really, nothing could have been closer to the truth. Scout lay awake at night fearing that one day BLU would discover their lone lamb among lions, fumbling out of bed at three in the morning and into the bathroom to shove his head under the sink and clear his scattered head. His nerves broke him, rattled him, sent him spiraling into the showers fully clothed, sitting barefoot on the icy tile with his head in his hands while the other boys laughed and joked and huddled around the one person who could make him and only him dizzy with a cherry chocolate swirl of emotions and frets and fears and dreams. Even the slightest shudders in the night had him out of bed with his Force-A-Nature in hand within seconds, ear to the wall in expectant horror as his heart galloped on at full-speed. Those false alarms only made him worry more - made his sleep less frequent, his shooting practice more common, and his meandering gazes towards the unequivocally carefree miss who set this whole thing into motion more like a regular occurrence. Having her on the battlefield, the actual battlefield, with bullets whizzing past and fire exploding like a Fourth of July spectacular, it would have killed the both of them. She would be discovered, murdered, if not kidnapped and tortured first, and if he didn't trip up as he had that first day and sent himself spinning wildly into enemy territory then the news of all the horrible things that he just knew would happen to her would surely send him to his grave. Without a second thought he would have laid down his life just to keep her from ever going out there, and, in a striking moment of clarity, he realized that the intel, in all of its holy mysteriousness and hallowed importance, had become completely worthless to him. Now, four years later, he had discovered something really worth protecting on this godforsaken base.
Spy stood in silence, shoulders back in that perpetually businesslike aura that he always projected, and with an apathetic nod in Scout's general direction he turned to leave. The words he spoke, four simple little things - empty morphemes that, on a different day, in another time, could have meant absolutely nothing - caused Scout's heart to stop dead in his chest.
"Oh, I know." Spy growled. "And now zo does she."
Scout swiveled around automatically and came face to face with a bewildered Penny, standing at a sloppy form of attention in the middle of the hall. The strangest chimera of surprise and sadness and frustration and doubt all wrapped into one draped across her face, and he simply froze, jaw slack, and could feel his fingers begin to tingle and numb. It was a slow motion moment - the kind that can only happen when things just seem so intensely unreal and muddled in life - and for the briefest of seconds he found himself wondering whether or not he was dreaming.
"No," he coughed with a disbelieving murmur, running both hands over his head. "No, no, no, no. Penny, no - I don't mean it like that."
"Oh?" She whispered with a shockingly harmless smile that stung even more than any punch she could have thrown at him.
"No," he mumbled again, taking two stumbling steps towards her. She didn't move - not so much as a flicker of kinesis - never once drawing her eyes from his face, confusion glistening in them boldly. "Please believe me, please. Please. Just gimme a chance to explain."
"You've already explained yourself pretty well."
"Penny, please. Don't do this." He pleaded, hands clamped together in a desperate prayer. "Just five minutes, just give me five minutes." She stared emptily at the impassioned boy before her in silence, fighting off her dulling frustration with a nagging sense of empathy. Part of her whispered to stay, to hear what he had to say and then make whatever judgment she so willed, but the other part of her, the one suddenly confused and wrecked and unexpectedly heartbroken for reasons that she didn't entirely understand told her to leave - to run as fast as her legs would take her and leave him in his own lingering misogynism. Why, she wondered, why could she feel the sting of his words, his passion, poison her like a gallon of bleach to the blood? One or two of the more peculiar boys had been just as reluctant to accept her in the beginning, to let her into their mysteriously brave new world, but she had held strong, brushed it off with a wink and a smile, never once worried and always figured it would settle itself. But now, now she felt her body writhe underneath her and her head spin in a drunken rush; her limbs went cold and her heart felt as though it had been turned inside out and scrubbed clean, and in a synesthetic explosion she watched with baby doll-glazed eyes as a fireworks show of her emotions, labeled in reds and blues and violent greens, appeared and separated before her eyes with delicately swirling care. In no way, shape, or form could she account for the sudden rush of feeling washing over her - the way her chest knotted up and the pit of her stomach hollowed out with a painful tug - but the confusion settled deep into her senses and, like a muse breaking free at last, whispered things into her ear with a sudden break of illuminating clarity that made her body shake. It told her what this was called, what she was feeling, why she felt how she did, and with a stumble of perplexing disorientation and a warm shudder deep in her bones she knew, clearly, surely, obviously, that it was right. She stared at Scout with a sudden fluster, the turbulence of her thoughts showing clearly on her face, and she took her first step back, away from him and back down the hall. Words failed - all she could do was stare strangely at him, expression halfway between an empty rage and something entirely new, but to the poor boy standing back she simply looked hurt - angered and saddened by a stupid mistake to the point of unwitting submission. She turned without another word and stumbled back down the hall, leaving him standing alone and confused, mouth agape, and despite the pains and pleas stabbing at every inch of his body he couldn't bring himself to call after her. He simply watched her go, chest thumping madly, and suddenly found it exhausting just to breathe.
Here it was - that inevitable mistake that shattered everything like a dropped glass at an otherwise marvelous party. He had broken something special, something unparalleled and powerful, and the whole room had snapped to silence all at once as if inspecting his mistake with a meticulous dissection. All over some silly confusion, he mused. All of this over a couple of misinterpreted words and his own stupid insistence on keeping up appearances within the team. This, he though, this is all that it took to end something that, god only knows, hadn't even started.
The weakness took over at last and he collapsed on the nearest wall, a shaking arm bracing himself against the cold concrete, and with a slow slide he dragged himself down to take a huddled seat on the floor. Head in his hands, there he sat, drifting in and out of disbelief until the lights flickered out around him and the base went deadly quiet the way it did every night. There he remained, fuzzy and hazy and unmoving for longer than he could possibly remember, with nothing but his regrets to keep him warm.