The Soldier snuck up on the Cook in the kitchen again the next morning. He stood quietly for a few seconds behind her as she unloaded mugs from the cabinet, watching her strain, balanced on her toes, to empty the shelf. Well, he thought, she appears more or less okay, and whatever else the Medic gets up to, he wouldn't seriously hurt her. She moved easily, without any visible stiffness. He assumed she'd probably enjoyed the medigun. Lord knows he did, more than he wanted to. Whatever the Medic put in the damn thing was as good as any of the medication he'd ever been given for pain at any field hospital—sans sorci, mercy in a bottle, the soldier's friend—that vapor had something courtesy of the poppy. It wouldn't surprise him if it was an intentional addition, something to ensure they'd come see the Medic when in pain.

Caught up in his own thoughts, the Soldier barked. "Are you well? Ready to go to battle again?"

The Cook caught the mug just in time, whipping around to face him. "What? Oh, yes, just fine."

Shit, he thought. I did it again. Fast reflexes, though. "Good… Rosie. We must always be prepared. Let me help you with those." He reached for the basket and then paused, his fingers hovering over the wicker. "Wait, are those foreign breads?"

The Cook looked down at the croissants. "What, these? No, they're… freedom bread."

"Well, they look like croissants." He lifted one, turning it between two fingers as if afraid of contamination. Paris was bad enough the first time, he thought. Fussy, shouting, easily offended French men and their pretty wives. Flirty, touchy, and not serious about any of it. The food was good enough, but they made way too much of an event of eating.

"Nope," she said, pulling the croissant from his fingers with a grin. "This is the American version."

His lips quirked, something just slightly short of a smile: her grin was infectious, unabashed, and even slightly cocky, something he'd been unsure she would be able to do after the last few days. The Soldier realized he rather liked her, the fact that she'd been able to bounce back. "Well, as long as they're good, old-fashioned American bread."

She pushed the basket at his chest, the movement startling him. He flinched, recovering to grab the wicker after a noticeable pause. One of his eyelids twitched, and she felt a wave of sympathy at the fragility she could see in his face.

The Cook froze. "Are you…"

His eyelid twitched again, but he smiled, a tired expression that quickly slid from his face. "Just peachy. Ready to go out and show those BLU what a real soldier looks like." He was a tall man, and the act of denying whatever he was denying seemed to shrink him, his spine bowing down beneath the weight of some burden. The small lines beside his mouth deepened, pulling his skin thin across the veins beneath it.

She closed her mouth and turned back to the platter of fried eggs. Something was there, something nasty that he had not spoken about or acknowledged. His eyes were full of it. The Soldier sat at his place at the head of the table and started to load his plate. His shoulders under the tank top were high, a fine tremor rustling the cotton. Before the rest of the mercenaries came in the room, she slid around him and sat a close chair. "Solly? I need a gun. Where would I get one?"

"I'll get you one after breakfast. You need to be prepared." His hand hovered over hers for a second, hesitant, then he drew it back and picked up his fork. "Have you had training?"

She shrugged, her arms folded on the table. "Nothing really organized. More just hunting, like as a kid."

He sliced a fried egg, staring into his plate, and mumbled. "I'll take you out rest day to the range."

The Cook took a breath and then shook her head once, a small movement to remind herself not to say anything else. Prying wasn't likely to endear her to anyone on base, especially not someone with the kind of burden the Soldier appeared to be suffering beneath. As the rest of the mercenaries trickled into the room, she watched the Soldier draw himself up and begin to bellow. "You maggots are the most pathetic group of soldiers I've ever seen."

The Spy ran his fingers through his wet hair, leaving grooves. "It is entirely too early for this." He picked up the French press and pressed the plunger down slowly before pouring a cup. The Spy drained half the cup in a single swallow before seeing the croissants. "What is this?"

"Freedom bread," the Soldier yelled. "We have taken your weapons and used them against you, Frenchie."

The Spy looked over at the Cook. "This had better not be from a can." He took a tiny nibble of the side of the pastry, then came back for a bite. Dark chocolate oozed out of the hole in the croissant and he licked it from his chin. "Mon dieu, Vipere, this is actually worth eating."

Seeing the chocolate, the Pyro pounced on the basket and loaded his plate. The Cook was relieved to see he didn't empty the entire basket, and reminded herself to always make five times the amount of sweets necessary to feed everyone. The Engineer pried the basket from the Pyro's hands and took one of his own, passing it around the table. The Demo held his hands up when the basket reached him.

"It's too early for sweets, lass."

"Speak for yourself," the Pyro mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate. "It's never too early."

"Nae, it's never too early for scrumpy." The Demo poured two fingers of moonshine into his milky tea and capped his flask. He drained the tea quickly, with only the smallest of grimaces, and shivered as the liquor spread its warm fingers through his stomach.

"Already? You'd better be glad you don't have to hit any precision targets." The Sniper sipped his coffee, long fingers slowly drumming the mug between sips, flexing and tapping them to warm them up. "It's a damn good thing you only have to be close."

"I have to be close all right, not hiding away in a hole. Do yeh hide because yer afraid of BLU or because yer yellow?"

The Sniper stared unblinking at the Demo over the yellow lenses of his glasses, his fingers stilling on the mug. "Would you like me to demonstrate what I do? I'll take the fee for team-killing to make a point."

"You make everything into a competition, Sniper." The Spy eyed Sniper up and down, his lip lifting in a sneer. "One might think you were compensating for something."

At the end of the table, the Medic smiled secretively over the rim of his teacup and said nothing.

"Would ya'll stop it for just one meal?" The Engineer's fork squealed against his plate as he cut an egg. "It's enough to put a man off food, listening to it."

"Oh man," said Scout to the Cook, jerking his thumb at the Spy and Sniper. "They never shut up." He tore a croissant in half and stuffed it in a cheek, his voice muffled by food. "They fight like a pair of old women over everything. My ma had this lady that lived two doors down that she hated and even they didn't fight this much." He swallowed noisily and drew a breath to speak.

"Like you, rabbit?" The Sniper stood up. "Right quiet, you are." He snagged a croissant and walked out of the room. The Cook saw the Spy watch him out of the corner of his eye before busying himself with the last bite of croissant.

"Very good, Vipere. Tell me," the Spy said, stifling a yawn, "have you roasted a rack of lamb?"

"Yes," she said, wiping her mouth. "Only once, but yes." Very few of the restaurants she'd worked for had thought rack of lamb to be worth the effort and cost of having as a regular menu item, though one had tried it as an experimental menu item and discovered that like many specialty meals, the preparation work to assemble the dish was a bit prohibitive and very easy for trainee chefs to ruin—the sheer volume of accidental lamb jerky on the day they'd been allotted to train for the recipe had convinced the owner not to bother. She had bought several of the requisite racks with her, assuming she'd have enough creative freedom to play with her food.

"Mint sauce?"

The Spy's mildly skeptical expression annoyed her. The sauce itself was not complicated, and the condescension with which he'd greeted the question made her itch to slap the man. "I can."

"Soon." With that, the Spy stretched and stood up. "I shall go prepare. But before I go, Vipere, the Engie and Demo have not stopped insisting that we ask your preferences for company this evening."

The Engineer flushed. "Look here, Frenchie, you make it sound bad." He turned to the Cook, his eyes pleading. "We can wait, but we think you should get a little more input."

"Aye," the Demo said, leaning forward in his chair to rest his elbows on the table, his expression serious. "Our friends are boors. We'd like yeh ta have more voice."

The Cook looked around the table, meeting the eyes of the Scout, the Demo, and the Engineer—eagerness, curiosity, and an apologetic cringe, respectively. The Soldier looked at the floor, the wall, the table, her eyes with a flash of interest, then back to the wood of the table, studying the grain in minute detail. The Scout's cheerful eagerness was easy enough to understand. She wasn't quite sure what the Demo wanted. His mild curiosity seemed, if not disinterested, then not sexual. The Engineer seemed as if he'd prefer, just then, to crawl under the breakfast table—but why? Her eyes narrowed in thought, and her lower lip crept between her teeth involuntarily, a gesture she'd had since childhood. She realized she was biting it and pulled it from between her teeth, an abrupt gesture that made a quiet pop in the silence of the room. She didn't feel like dealing with any of it: the eagerness, the curiosity, the embarrassment. The only person in the room who'd warned her, or for that matter offered to help her was the Soldier, whose intent study of the grain of wood on the table had, surprisingly enough, not burned a hole in it. "I think, actually, I'd like to spend a little time with Soldier."

The Scout caught his lower lip in his buck teeth. The Demo shrugged, pushing himself away from the table and pulling his bandoleer to straighten it. The Engineer stared at her, mouth slightly open for a moment before speaking. "What? Solly?"

The Soldier looked up at her through the shadow of his helmet, his eyes a dulled gray. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, Solly," she said, staring at the Soldier, whose cheeks had reddened. "You said you'd show me the range and get me a gun."

He blinked, the corners of his mouth turning down slightly, but nodded. "I'll be right back." Rising from the table, he strode quickly from the room, walking hard enough to jostle the dishes and cups on the table—a walk just this side of a stomp.

"Yo. Yo babe," the Scout said, and stood, mischief lighting his face as he pointed down at his crotch. "If you want to play with a gun, I'm right here."

The Cook stifled a laugh. His cheeky gesture was comic in its sincerity. "I'll get there, Scout."

Behind him, the Engineer cleared his throat. "Miss, be a little careful with Solly. He's got a temper."

"Yeah," the Scout said. "One time, I saw him jump off a ledge to land on a BLU Pyro, spade first. He damn near decapitated the poor bastard for killing him a few times."

She blinked. The Soldier had not shown her anything that resembled anger, instead seeming tentative, even shy and as if he wanted to please. "I think I'll be fine."

"Miss, would you let me give you a little alarm, just in case?" The Engineer shifted in his seat, metal hand flexing on the table with a faint screech. "I could whip one up while I'm working today. Maybe a little something on a necklace?"

"I think he'd notice." The Cook was starting to think that this was a way of picking on the Soldier—a running gag that had long since lost its humor—claims that the man was violent, or even that he was angry. Would an angry man come to the kitchen early and set the table, she thought, or be so afraid to touch that he'd kiss a woman on the cheek instead of the mouth?

"Yeah, but Solly can be a little," the Engineer paused, watching the mulish expression on her face, "volatile." Dear lord, he thought. She really is a little simple. Or Solly's been a charming shit.

"I'll be fine."

The Engineer sighed. Some people, he thought, had to make all their mistakes on their own. "All right. At least you're in respawn, so anything he might get up to won't be permanent." Well, he amended himself silently, in the strictly physical sense. Of course, if she hadn't run screaming after the time she'd spent with the team sadists and the psychotic, perhaps she wouldn't run. What kind of woman had they sent?

"Do you really think he'll," she trailed off, hand making helpless circles. She couldn't picture the Soldier doing anything of the kind—couldn't picture him doing anything violent, for that matter. She knew he fought. They all fought. But she same man who'd kissed her cheek in the kitchen seemed incapable of doing her violence.

"He might. You never know with Solly. Or with Pyro, for that matter."

"Hey," the Pyro said, around his last croissant. "I behaved. Ask the Doctor."

"That you did."

"He did," said the Cook. "He was quite nice." She shifted in her chair, the movement reminding her pleasantly of the previous night.

"Well, yeah, but he was being supervised. Do you want one of us in with you and Solly?"

The Soldier returned, carrying a heavy pistol and a loaded clip. The expression on his face, tense and surly, announced that he'd heard at least part of the conversation. "One of what, maggots?"

"Nothing, Solly," the Engineer said, holding his hands up. "Just making conversation."

The Soldier glared at the Engineer for a moment, then bent down to look the Cook in the eyes, expression serious. "First thing. Don't put it in your pants loaded or you'll shoot your nuts off."

The table burst into laughter.

"Oh for crying out loud... you know what I mean." The Soldier shifted foot-to-foot, faint spots burning high in his cheeks. "I didn't load it because you'll need to learn how to load it. See the shape of the handle? See the groove? Line up the clip and push it in until it clicks."

The Cook grabbed the gun, which lay heavy and cold in her hand. The clip was full of bullets with little divots in their lead heads, the jackets shiny brass that reflected her face. She carefully lined up the grooves and pushed the clip in until it clicked in her hand.

The Soldier pointed to a small lever on the side of the gun. "That is the safety, soldier. When you want to shoot, you just flick it down. Don't do it now."

He pointed again, to the top of the gun. "When you want to chamber a round to start shooting, you flick off the safety and pull this. This is the slide. Don't do that now."

From his belt pouch, he pulled a coiled belt and holster. "Here, stand up. I had to guess at the size, but this should fit."

When the Cook stood, he reached around her gingerly, avoiding contact. He fed the tongue into the belt, pulling it tight, then fastened it, stepping back. "Okay, you put the gun in that and fasten the strap over it."

The Cook looked down, using both hands to slide the gun into its holster and click the strap down over the butt of the gun. "Hey, Solly?"

"Yes?"

"Is there somewhere to put my knives?" Like many of her fellow chefs, she had her professional knives and a few personal knives—few restaurants paid enough to keep their chefs out of rough neighborhoods, and a knife served as a friendly little reminder to others to keep their distance.

"We can fix that later. Battle waits for no man, nor any of these foreign fucks."

The Heavy laughed sadly, drawing his ballistic jacket on with an absent shrug. The Medic placed his cup down neatly in his saucer. He stood, and they walked out of the room together, the Medic slightly trailing his lover.

"Yo, toots, a kiss for luck over here?"

The Cook blew him a kiss, answering his mischievous gesture earlier with a teasing flippancy and a dirty smile. "Good luck."

The Scout put his hands to his heart and spun on a heel, his overreaction intentionally comic. "You're killin' me."

The Engineer stood up and sighed heavily. "Not yet, son. That's BLU's job."

The Cook could hear the announcer from the kitchen, calling the time and announcing captures. She wove a thick, unwaxed string through the Frenched rib bones of a rack of lamb, drawing them together into a crown. "Well," she said, comforting herself, "it isn't like I had a dinner plan yet. And this ought to shock that French fuck."

Behind her, someone cleared their throat. "Yo… you."

She turned. The Scout walked toward her, his pace slow. "Hey, lady, whatcha doin?" He stared at her, not breaking eye contact as he crossed the kitchen.

The Cook felt something cold creep down her back at the look on his face—the flippancy and humor of his expression was gone, leaving something malicious in his eyes. The boyish amusement was gone, leaving a calculating coolness. "Making rack of lamb… Scout." Her hand pawed the counter behind her, nicking her fingers on the flaying knife before finding its handle.

"Just makin' food, huh?" His gaze wandered slowly up and down her, an accounting very different than his first, cheerfully raunchy survey. "Just like that."

"That's what I do, Scout. I make food." She bought the knife up between them, the little hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. Whatever or whomever this man was, he was not the Scout. The Scout's loose limbed strut was gone, leaving the careful, rolling walk of a predator.

He focused on the thin sliver of steel between them, then looked past it at the gun in its holster at her waist. "I see that knife, lady. The gun isn't good enough for you?"

"A good cook always keeps good knives." If, as she suspected, she was about to fight whomever this was, she wanted something she was comfortable using. Knives had always been her friend, and the same creeping sense that held the hairs on her neck up told her to keep something she knew she could use.

He chuckled, the noise lower than Scout's normally high laugh. "I see. And if I asked what else you did, what would you tell me?"

"Nothing. Not a damn thing." The Cook tensed, but before she could swing the knife, the Scout bounded across the kitchen and grabbed her arm with one hand and put the other over her gun. The air rippled, and the Cook found herself looking at a balaclava and a pair of eyes so dark they were nearly black. His blue, pin-striped suit was surprisingly neat for battlefield attire—the cotton clean of blood.

The man made a thoughtful hum in the back of his throat, the tone a surprisingly warm tenor. "We appear to have a bit of a problem… Cook."

She pushed up against his arms with both hands, painfully moving him a few inches away from her. The man, whomever he was, was heavy and clearly strong. The effort had started a line of sweat across her forehead and reddened her cheeks. Aside from a quiet grunt, he appeared to be holding her arms without effort. "Who the fuck are you?"

His grin in the balaclava was brilliant against the dark material. "No one special."

"You're the other team's spy, aren't you?" He had to be. She couldn't picture any of the rest of the team wearing this kind of formal clothing out on the battlefield. It was just like the RED Spy, and apparently his counterpart, to wear the kind of binding, uncomfortable clothing to a war.

His lips twisted wryly. "You're an observant thing."

She looked down the line of his body and realized, like far too many men before him, that he hadn't bothered to pin her legs, a mistake he was about to regret. "Fuck you," she said, and brought her knee up into his groin hard enough to feel his balls roll under her kneecap. The BLU Spy hissed and head-butted her in the nose. When her head lolled back, he scuttled backward, making a whining noise through his nose. After a moment, he had enough air to gasp. "You're a feisty little bitch, aren't you?" He straightened with some effort, stiff with pain.

The Cook scrubbed at the trickle of blood from her swelling nose with her free hand, the knife bobbing in front of her. "Why don't you come closer and find out?"

"And risk another cheap shot? No, I'll come back later."

The air around him rippled and he disappeared. The Cook edged around the counter with her back to the door, trying the air in front of her with the knife, before closing and locking the kitchen door. She backed into a corner, her free hand pressed against her chest. The blade of the knife shook in front of her. She realized she was making high pitched, animal noises and put her free hand to her mouth. She shook violently, finally biting her hand to focus herself. Her mouth sagged open with the pain and she whimpered. The door shook from impact and she jumped, stabbing the air in front of her.

"Hey, lady, you seen a scumbag in a blue suit around here?"

It took her three tries to speak. "You just missed him."

"You okay, lady?"

Her voice sounded odd, even to her. "Just fine, Scout."

"Lady, he ain't in there, is he?"

With a painful tingle, the blood drained from her face, the room reeling around her. "Oh god, I hope not."

"Well, you keep the door locked." The Scout paused. "Whatever you're making, it smells fantastic."

The Cook swore and dove at the stove, the knife skittering across the counter. The first bitter edge of burnt sugar wafted through the kitchen as she opened the oven door—the edges of her cakes had blackened.

"Gotta go, lady."

She heard the sound of his sneakers squeak into the distance and nursed a burned hand. On the stove, eight cake pans steamed into the air. The Cook sat down next to the stove, staring through the tile, and waited for her heart to stop pounding, and the adrenaline crash to fade from her buzzing head. She mechanically finished dinner without unlocking the door, dragging her knife through the kitchen as she worked.

It took the Engineer an hour to convince her to open the door, and only after the Demo and Medic had confirmed that he was the Engineer. When he walked into the kitchen, he found her back in the corner, still clutching the knife. "Which one did you meet?"

"The spy."

"Oh." He fumbled in mid-air, then put his hands on his hips. "Shit, it could have been worse. It could have been the other Pyro."

She looked up at him, her face a blank.

"I'm not helping. Come on, Missy, come eat." He offered her a hand up which she ignored, then turned and walked out of the kitchen. She followed him out to the table silently, knife upright in her hand. The Engineer, looking over his shoulder, scooted out of the doorway and put his back to the wall. "Our Cook here had a close encounter with the BLU spy today," the Engineer announced to the room.

The Medic winced—they'd all had the horrible, icy burn of his knife slipping into their spine from behind. The BLU Spy had a veritable genius for catching them unaware and punishing their distraction. "Fräu, are you well?"

She looked up at the Medic, still stunned, a fine tremor moving the point of the knife in the air. "I kneed him in the balls."

After a moment of shocked silence, the room erupted in laughter.

"Oh Christ, you got old Stabby in the nuts?" The Scout fell over his arms, howling.

The Engineer patted her gently on the back, leaning away from his own arm in case she turned with the knife. "That's really good. You must have shocked the hell out of him for him to let you that close."

"I have always said that man lacked a certain professionality," said the Spy, lolling on his chair.

The Sniper looked at her, a sharply nasty grin on his face. "I said you'd do just fine."

The Soldier cocked his head, peeping out at her from under his helmet. "Rosie, do you want company tonight?"

"He said he'd come back later." The fingers of her free hand clutched at the table. She was going to fall asleep and that invisible man would come find her—who knows what he'd do? She'd kneed him in the balls, a strike so personal that she had no doubt he'd want revenge. She was going to wake up in the middle of the night to see those dark eyes in the balaclava and … she couldn't stop thinking about him disappearing. He could be anywhere. Anywhere.

"Don't worry, we'll get him." The Soldier awkwardly patted her hand, resting his hand briefly against hers on the table. The mercenaries could see it when it hit her. The colors in the room sharpened and she flushed, taking a deep breath. The blood in her ears sang—alive. Alive. She was still alive. Her skin tingled, pulse surging through her, and she could feel it rush through the small trees of her veins. Alive.

"There it is, lassie."

She looked over at the Demo, eyes glassy. Warmth spread through her like a tide. "I want… I…" Her mouth worked, but she couldn't focus her thoughts on anything but the thrum and the word alive, echoing through her. She wanted to shout, or run, her nerves like plucked strings: sweat and the body screaming to move, to do something.

"Perfectly normal, lassie. Every one of us has had the feeling at least once."

The Engineer chuckled. Her skin was incandescent, pupils drowning wide and black, her hair like a flame against her skin. She was panting, and the knife had slipped from her hands onto the table. Her head turned slowly, trying to find the voices. Drunk, he thought, amused, on adrenaline. It's been a long damn time since I felt that way. "She'll be lively company tonight, Solly, if you can keep her from crying."

"Do you really want to eat?" The Soldier squeezed her hand gently, searching her face. Her head turned slowly, those huge eyes finding and devouring his face. She sat, silent, simply absorbing him. Can you, he asked silently. Can you talk? Is anyone in there?

"No one wants to eat a burned roast," the Spy said, dryly, and poked the chop in front of him.

The Cook squeezed the Soldier's hand back, surprising a wince from him. "I'm not hungry."

"I think you are," said the Sniper. "But not for food yet. Might want to pack a sandwich, Solly. It's liable to be a long night."

"We are just fine, maggots!" The Soldier let her pull him from the room. "We will be just fine," he yelled over his shoulder.

Catcalls followed them from the room.