"Ouch, Scout!"

The boy had just poked my arm after I'd specifically told him not to. That syringe had left a nasty bruise after the Medic extracted a pint of my blood for testing. It wasn't that I'd believed him when he'd denied long-lasting pain, but I didn't think it would leave a bruise that big either. Now it had a band aid over it, but that still didn't stop the Scout from trying to poke it again.

"Touch it one more time, and I'll feed you your own socks," I threatened him good-naturedly, but he only laughed in response.

"Couldn't help it, you're such a freakin crybaby!"

"Am not," I denied with a pout.

"It was a tiny needle! How much could it hurt?" he asked, his voice taking on a higher pitch. I noticed he did that whenever he was on the verge of laughing.

"There was nothing tiny about that needle mate, believe me," I said, recalling the size of the thing. "I have no idea what he plans to do with all that blood, he took so much."

"It's weird," he said after he stopped laughing, "I don't remember him taking any of my blood when I got here. He just scanned me for the Medi-gun."

"Yeah, he did that too." I had stared at the enormous gun for a good few minutes before I started paying attention to the doctor again. A gun that heals on the spot. Was it even physically possible? How did something like that even work? Did it only work on battle wounds? Or could it even heal… other things? "That machine is impossibly incredible, and incredibly impossible."

"You use long words," he said, scratching his head underneath his hat. We were sitting in our room, he on his bed, and me on the floor in a patch I'd managed to clear of the general clutter. As soon as I'd got back from my training with the Medic, I'd collapsed on Scout's bed. I hadn't meant to fall asleep, but before I knew it, I was being shaken awake by an amused Scout. It had been six thirty then. It was seven fifteen now, and we were just killing time before heading down to dinner at eight.

"I apologize if my vast vocabulary is too advanced for your inferior self to comprehend," I said, intentionally using a stream of fancy English to tick him off.

"Inferior my ass, you aint got nothing on me toots," he smirked confidently. "Those big words aint gon get you anywhere on the battlefield. It's street smarts and strength you need here."

"I'm ok with the first one, not so sure about the second though," I admitted. "I'm not exactly England's star heavyweight champion."

"Do I look like a steroid-guzzlin wrestler to you?" he asked with a quirky eyebrow. "Liftin heavy objects isn't my thing, but I'm good at what I do. And If I'm good at what I do, then I'm strong. Soon as I start slackin, I get weak. The trick is to keep at it every day."

I allowed myself a private smile. For someone who had the impulses of a five-year-old, he had the right idea. I looked up to the boy from my position on the floor, and found him beaming down at me. His two front teeth stuck out ever so slightly than the rest, and from my angle, he looked like a hyperactive chipmunk who'd just found a stash of acorns. Definitely cute, I decided. With a certain degree of shame, I realised I didn't even know what the boy's job on the team was. "Hey Scout, what exactly do you do?"

"Everything," he replied with the smuggiest of smug looks on his face.

"Uh-huh." I intentionally aimed to sound unimpressed, and it worked.

"No kiddin, they'd be a mess without me," he insisted. "I capture the points, I steal the enemy intelligence, I bonk the crap out of Red, AND," he said, counting everything on his fingers, "I run faster than a speeding bullet."

"No way," I denied, shaking my head.

"It's the truth!"

"Do you know how fasts bullets move?" I challenged him. "Do you know how fast you'd have to move to outrun a bullet? The answer is very fast; impossibly fast. There's no way you can run that fast."

He grinned. "Wanna bet?"

"You're on."

"You're gonna lose sweetcheeks," he said confidently as he tipped his hat back. "Nothing moves faster than I do."

"We'll see," I said, mirroring his cocky voice. "What are we betting on?"

"I donno, don't have much to offer," he said, looking quickly around his disordered room. "We usually bet on favours here," he admitted.

"Favours?" I asked. I wasn't sure what he meant by that.

"Yeh, like if you win, I owe you a favour, if I win, you owe me a favour. Kinda like debts y'know? He explained.

I thought it over a couple of seconds. It seemed reasonable enough to me. "You have a deal Scout," I said, offering up my right hand. "Shake on it?"

"Done," he grinned. "Get ready to lose."

"Dream on runner boy," I teased.

"lots of other things to dream about. Losing aint one of 'em," he assured me, retracting his hand from my grip and falling back onto his mattress. "By the way, almost forgot to tell ya, you should probably hit the showers now. Everyone else usually goes after dinner on ceasefire days. Don't think you wanna be caught up in a room full of naked old guys." He shivered. "Specially if fatty forgets his pants again. Lemme tell you, you do NOT want to see that."

I stood up. "No I do not," I agreed. Instinctively, I walked towards the closet like I usually did back home, only to remember that I wasn't at home, and more importantly, that I didn't have any clothes. "Ah crap," I muttered.

"What's up?" Scout asked from his bed.

"I don't really have any clothes to change into, remember?" I sighed. How long were they going to keep my damn suitcase anyway? I had vitals in there! "Nor soap either."

"Oh, um…" I would have bet my life that the Scout's face was burning like there was no tomorrow as he spoke. "You could always… Borrow some of my stuff."

"Really?" I deliberately didn't look at him. He wasn't the only one blushing like a fire hydrant. "You don't mind?"

"Yeh sure, no problem… What's mine's yours." He still didn't get up. "Just um… make sure they're clean."

I opened the closet door. Picked up the first pair of folded underwear. Dug around a bit and found socks and another shirt. I could stay in my own trousers again. "Thanks." Was my face on fire? "Where's the bathroom?"

"Right down the hall. My locker combination's 2326. There's towels in the racks."

"2326. Right. Thanks." I was out of there so fast I was almost faster than a bullet. I let out a small laugh when I was out of the Scout's earshot. It was embarrassing yes, but it was also rather funny.

It didn't take long to find the showers. They were actually quite close to our room, so at least there was that. They were also, thank god, completely deserted. It was a good thing they were too. Each shower stall was separated only by a thin sheet of wood. They were short enough to let you have a decent conversation with the person next to you. Ideal for nine male mercenaries. Not so much for an eighteen year old girl. Good thing the Scout remembered, I thought as I placed the borrowed clothes on one of the benches. 2326. Right, the locker.

"Shite." He'd forgotten to tell me which one was his, and in my embarrassed state, I'd forgot to ask. I was about to turn back, when I spotted it. "Of course." It could be no other than the one overrun with baseball stickers. I had noticed more of his room as we sat speaking that day. He had more baseball posters than he had actual wall. I didn't recognize any one of them though. I didn't play the sport and I never followed it. 2326. The locker sprung open, and I pulled out two bottles that read 'Shampoo' and 'Shower Gel' respectively. The contents were coloured a bright, fluorescent green, and when I popped the lid, they smelled like mint and apples. Quite nice really.

I was weary of getting naked, especially considering anyone could just walk in at any second. But I didn't have time to hesitate, 8pm was getting closer, and I was getting rather hungry. Quick as a flash, I pulled off my clothes and stepped into the stream of hot water. I couldn't recall ever showering so quick in my life, but my paranoia was fuelled when I saw something shift in the corner of my eye. I looked quickly, but there was nothing there, so I assumed it was just the steam fogging up my vision. I returned my attention back to myself shortly after and opened the products. I squeezed some of the green gel onto my palm and rubbed it into my hair until a soft lather had formed. I noted faintly that the soap smelled the same way his bed did when I'd lain down on it for my unintended nap. I suppose it was the other way round really, but now my bed would smell this way too; like the Scout. I couldn't say I minded very much.

I went about scrubbing and rinsing off the rest of my body quickly. I only slowed down around my upper chest; that area, just below my neck, that was littered with scars. It wasn't that they hurt. Those wounds had healed a long time ago. But I still shivered whenever I traced the outlines with shaky fingertips. The skin might have healed, but the pain of the memories was still as fresh as ever. I pulled my hands away. If I went down that road I'd be in the downpour of hot water all night, lost to events long past and buried. I washed off the last of the soap and closed the taps. No need for that tonight; dwelling on the past wouldn't help me now.

I wrapped myself in a fluffy blue towel off the racks as soon as I stepped out of the steamy stall. There was a smaller one too which I wrapped around my head in an attempt to dry my hair. Now for the unusual part. I picked up the boxers and held them at arms' length. In my rush to escape the embarrassing tension of our room, I'd hardly paid attention to what pair I'd chosen. I looked at them now. They were coloured a rich carbon black, and at the edges, a slim rim of charcoal grey. To be fairly honest, they looked almost identical to my own pairs of boxer shorts. It was just the legs that were longer, and sure enough, when I pulled them on, they covered up my thighs much like running shorts did. His socks too were longer than what I was used to, so that when I pulled on my trousers they felt tighter than before due to the extra layers beneath. But hey, at least I have clothes, I thought to myself as I pushed my arms out of the shirt I'd borrowed. It differed from the one I was wearing before in that it was long-sleeved, but apart from that they were virtually identical. Size and all. Only the tips of my fingers poked out of the material so that the ends were all wet by the time I was finished tying my damp hair up into a messy ponytail.

When I got back to the room, I found Scout leaning against the empty doorway toying with a baseball in his hands. He'd put a hoodie on over his shirt, and even taken off his hat and headset. When he saw me coming, he grinned, tossing the ball blindly into his room and standing straight. "We're having a cookout!" he said excitedly.

"We are?"

"Yeah! The stove's all beat up and the gas cylinder exploded, so we can't use the kitchen until they replace that stuff. Engie came by and told us to grab some warm clothes and meet them out back for sausages and corn."

I smiled at him. "Sounds good," I said while playing around with the oversized sleeves of the shirt. The Scout noticed and a blush crossed his cheeks.

"Clothes alright?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," I answered, biting down on my lip to stop me from laughing. "Thank you."

"No problem," he shrugged. "You don't have to keep askin, just take what you need until your stuff gets here," he told me.

I nodded with a small blush of my own. "Your clothes are actually quite comfortable," I admitted, signalling for him to take the lead and steer us outside.

"Yeh, you just look so freakin tiny in them," he laughed, walking in front of me.

"Well you're hardly a size eight, are you?" I teased.

"Not a chance toots."

It actually took us a bit longer to get out back then I'd expected. The base wasn't enormous, but it certainly felt that way. I had no idea which way we were going or how the Scout even knew how to get there. I made a mental note to try and familiarise myself with the place as soon as I could. I wasn't always going to have someone guiding me around after all. Eventually though, we did escape the maze of steel and concrete, and walked out into the calm night air. There was quite a bit of land enclosed by a high fence, and beyond that, an endless, vast wilderness stretching out into the moonlit horizon. It was quite peaceful, and mostly uninterrupted save for the occasional pillar of rock reaching up to touch the stars. The enclosed area looked much like any ordinary backyard, except it had no greenery and was occupied instead by small groups of sizeable crates. I noted the BLU logo stamped onto each one as walked past a couple that were stacked up. I didn't have much time to wonder what was in them though. As soon as we were in sight, we were enveloped by the pandemonium that our teammates were making around a small bonfire.

"Good evening," I tried to say to the Engineer when he was in hearing range. I was positive he hadn't heard me, because at the same time that I uttered the first syllable, the Heavy let out a deafening roar.

"No, is MY sausage!" he yelled, snatching the piece of meat that was smaller than his pinkie finger and holding it out behind him. "Soldier have other sausage."

"Unhand my food you communist simpleton!" the Soldier as yelling back. "Go sit in a corner and eat your sour dough while I eat the food of FREEDOM!" He moved so fast, I nearly missed him pouncing onto the fat man's oversized belly. Even though the Russian was nearly three times as large as the Soldier, the latter still managed to knock him over onto his back. Unfortunately for the military man, the Heavy had also succeeded in moving his arm back, just out of the soldier's reach. "Give me the sausage!"

"No!"

"Ach, gentlemen please," the Medic begged, "act your age!"

"Aaaaaaargh!" the Soldier screamed when Heavy brought his fist down onto the man's head. I had little doubt that if it weren't for his helmet, the Soldier's head would have collapsed beneath the gargantuan force.

The doctor shook his head. "Like speaking to children," he remarked just as Soldier brought his boot up against the Russian's jaw.

I saw the Sniper dodge a stray punch without so much as a blink. He seemed at ease in one of the many lawn chairs and was drinking steadily from a dark beer bottle. Judging by his lack of alarm, the two men's behaviour was nothing new. When he saw me staring at the brawl he just smirked and raised his beer in greeting, as if there weren't two men trying to tear each other apart over a sausage just three feet away. I was about to offer a reply when Scout nudged me in the ribs. When I looked at him, he gave me a wink and said, "Watch this."

I would have tried to stop him, if he weren't already standing behind them in the time it took me to blink. Maybe not so clever on that bet there Katie. Before they could even notice his presence, the boy plucked the sausage from Heavy's outstretched hand and gobbled it down in one bite. "Too slow fellas!" he taunted, clutching his stomach as he laughed.

It took them a couple of seconds before they realised the boy had cheated them out of their prize. I saw the anger flash suddenly across the Heavy's face, but the Scout was too preoccupied enjoying his victory to noticed the club-sized arm swinging towards him.

"Scout!" I tried to warn him, but it was too late. By the time he'd wiped the cocky smirk off his face to react, the arm had already connected with his midriff and was swiping him back. The boy was quick, but not quick enough it would seem, as he was propelled away at neck-breaking speed, straight into one of the piles of crates. He crashed against the bottom box with a sickening splat, the back of his head erupting in a mist of red. Then, with a deafening crash, the seven other crates plummeted down atop the motionless boy. Amongst the splintering of wood, I heard bones snap and internal organs being squashed in a sickening symphony of sound.

I couldn't move. I willed my muscles to come to life, to twitch, to shake, to do something, but it was all in vain. I had to remind myself to breath; my lungs were close to collapsing. A part of me knew my reaction was unneeded. The Medic had gone to great lengths to explain to me the principle of respawn, but still my brain could not accept it. I had seen the boy getting buried beneath tonnes of unmovable weight. I had seen his skull crack open. I had seen him die. How could anyone just accept that?

"Lassie, are ye alright?" the Demoman asked me gently from his spot around the fire. His voice pulled me out of my reverie, and I turned to look at the rest of the men. They were as unfazed as they had been before, perhaps even more so now that the Soldier and Heavy had stopped bickering over their food. I was the only one feeling like I'd just been dunked in ice cold water and left to freeze in the night-time chill. I suspect it must have showed on my face, even if I tried my best to hide it. But I refused to let it override me.

"Yeah," I said in the steadiest voice I could muster, "I'm alright." I didn't wait for anyone to invite me to sit down this time, I just took the first seat I could find. Incidentally, it happened to be on the ground beside the Pyro. I noticed his hands were handcuffed behind his back, but he didn't seem to mind and was humming a tune I was familiar with but couldn't place at that moment.

"Ve talked about zis, remember?" the Medic reminded me from across the fire as I hugged my knees. "Do you remember vhere the respawn room is?"

"Groundfloor, second room to the right, central to the building," I recited. If there was one thing I was good at, it was remembering stuff. So far, I'd never had trouble retaining information. The Medic's drilling on medicine supply locations and key points had been no exception. My brain had soaked them up like a sponge. It still didn't make it any easier to actually deal with though.

"Correct," he said, pushing his spectacles up his nose as he spoke. "And how long vill it take him to respawn?"

I thought about it for a few seconds. Stab wounds took twenty seconds, gunshots thirty, and dismemberment sixty. But those were swift, clean deaths. This was full body trauma we were talking about now. The machine would have to reconstruct his entire body piece by piece. I shuddered at the thought and wondered if he was feeling the pain at that very moment. I shunned the image from my head and looked at the Medic. "Five minutes?" I offered.

The man sneered. "Six." He seemed content at the opportunity to correct me. I hadn't given him much to work with that morning. My body might have been a wreck, but my mind was not. But now he smiled down at me smugly, that unhinging mad glint reappearing in his eyes. Damn, this man had some bipolarity issues. I wanted to say something in reply, but thought better of it at the last second. This was the man I had to trust my life with under knife, needle and saw. It would be foolish of me to get on his bad side when my wellbeing for the foreseeable future depended so heavily on him. So I let it slide, and went back to staring at the flames instead.

"When d'yall reckon we'll be getting some decent time off?" the Engineer asked nobody in particular. I assumed he did it to change the subject and get my mind off the Scout. He seemed like a good guy, the Engineer. I was looking forward to my training with him. Engineering was, after all, my desired field of expertise.

"It bloody well be soon," the Demo remarked, stopping midsentence to chug down a gulp of liquor. "I've not had a good shag in ages."

I felt the tips of my ears turning pink.

"Mate, last Sheila to get in my bed was 1965. You're not the only one dying for a good fuck," the Sniper said to the amused laughter of the drunk Scotsman.

I was pretty sure my ears were not the only body part of mine to experience a shift in colour. If the heat I felt in my cheeks was anything to go by, my face was now burning up hotter than the sausages on the Engineer's griller. And as I shifted my position to hide myself from the men's gazes behind the Pyro, I realised just how wrong it all felt. All at once I felt too young and too out of place among the BLUs. This was the first proper time I was alone with them without the Scout somewhere nearby. He had contributed to the illusion of normality because he was almost as young as I was, and somehow that had helped. But now that he wasn't I suddenly felt the intense pressure of being in the middle of nowhere, sharing a building with nine older men, and a warzone with ten others whose sole intention towards me was to kill me. I felt so small as they shared jokes from past sexual escapades over the bonfire. I realised that the Scout probably experienced this too at some point or another, but with less intensity because he shared their gender. The youngest member of the team besides him was probably the Spy, and as far as I could deduce, even he was in his late thirties. I noted that thankfully, the masked man was nowhere to be seen, and I could at least count that as a blessing.

The Engineer had just handed me a sausage when I heard the sound of Scout's running shoes beating down on the dirt behind me. I turned around, and sure enough, I caught his gleaming smile just as he screeched to a halt behind me. "Miss me?" he asked me with that smirk still plastered all over his face. "Low blow bruddah," he added, addressing Heavy. The bald man grinned menacingly and stuffed his mouth full of freshly cooked sausages he'd been roasting on a smoking stick. It was all just a game to them though, and the Scout merely blew a raspberry at the man and sat down beside me in one fluid motion.

"Hey you," I greeted him softly. I blew on the sausage to cool it down before taking a small, tentative bite out of the meat. It was pork, and I chewed it thoroughly before swallowing it down. The boy's presence lightened my earlier mood significantly.

"Hey you," he repeated, the smug grin dissolving to a smile. "You alright?" he asked, probably seeing how tightly I held my knees to my chest.

"Oh, yes I'm fine," I assured him, loosening my grip around myself. "Are you alright?" I asked, directing the question at him.

"Course," he said, "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Just checking." I took another bite out of the sausage. I wished I had some water to go with it. Eating was always harder without water.

The lack of beverages didn't seem to bother the Scout however, and he wolfed down sausage after sausage as soon as the Engineer took them off the heat. And when the corn came out, the boy devoured two ears all on his own. I had nibbled at one before my stomach began to protest, and I gave it to him instead. The corn was gone in a matter of seconds. "Damn Scout," I'd whispered to him as I watched him destroy his fourth ear of corn, "How do you eat so much?"

The boy laughed with his mouth full of half-chewed kernels. "How do you eat so little? You're like a freakin bird!"

I didn't really want to answer his question, so I settled instead for something else. "Touché."

"Wha?" he asked, spraying corn everywhere.

"Never mind," I chuckled.

But even the Scout had a maximum capacity, and before long, he'd collapsed on his back with a content sigh, rubbing his full stomach. He pulled on the back of my shirt until I was lying beside him, staring up at the stars. The Engineer had brought out an acoustic guitar and was strumming a gentle tune to drown out the others' chattering.

"Hey A?" the Scout called, just loud enough so I could hear him.

"Yes?" I asked, letting my eyes drift to the boy beside me.

"You and me, we're buddies right?"

I smiled even though he couldn't see it. "Yeah Scout," I said to him, reaching up to playfully ruffle his hair. "We're buddies."

"Cool," he remarked, opening one lazy eye to look at me.

"Cool," I agreed.