The Cook rose long before dawn, the shards of sleep she'd grasped filled with the BLU Soldier's face, a kiss that boiled her blood, and a graphic vision of herself hunting crying strangers with a knife, the insensate joy of it waking her as she came. Still shuddering with the aftershocks, she ran to the bathroom to retch yellow bile into the toilet and take burning hot shower, scouring herself raw again before dressing in the single heaviest outfit she owned—turtleneck, flannel, tights and jeans, hair scraped into a bun that felt like penance. Out of the lack of anything else to do, she made herself a cup of coffee and took the stairs to the roof, where she'd drank with the Demo. When she pulled the tarp from the couch, the forgotten bottle of scrumpy fell out of it. Despite the frost tracery on the outside of the bottle, it had too high an alcohol content to freeze, a fact that she discovered after wiping it off on her jeans.
"Now that," she said appreciatively, "looks like a good idea."
The Cook unscrewed the lid and added it to her coffee until the cup overflowed. Closing the bottle, she took a gulp of the coffee and made a face. She sat for some time in the quiet, watching dawn start to pink the sky, before coming down off the roof, distantly drunk.
In the kitchen, she made crepes with exaggerated care, pouring the thick liquid into the pan and sliding the half finished crepes around, flipping them. The floor got three crepes in the process, the dough quickly setting into crusty circles. As she whipped the cream for them, the Spy walked into the kitchen.
"Yet another day of our little war, Vipere. I trust the Doctor behaved himself?" He put the lit cigarette in his mouth and started to button up his shirt, squinting through the smoke at her, hair crimped in waves from his pillow.
"I'm fine," she slurred, the part of her mind that kept screaming, screaming like it would never stop, had finally drowned, leaving silence.
The Spy leaned closer and sniffed. "You're drunk."
"I said I was fine." The Cook flicked off the mixer and carefully pulled the paddles from the cream. She pushed the button that released them and lifted one to her mouth, gingerly lapping at the sweet, thick mass of it, leaving white smears on either side of her mouth.
"I see you have been sharing with the floor." He finished buttoning his shirt and gestured at the half-cooked crepes around the stove. "Too drunk and sloppy to flip them into the pan at 6 am." The Spy snorted, tucking his shirt into his slacks and pulling his tie from a pocket. "You seem fine to me." But of course, the Spy thought, disgusted, the Doctor made it worse. Herr I-am-moral-until-I-am-angry could not possibly be trusted to do anything delicate. Oh no, he must get angry and justify his way into something that leaves scars.
"You know what," she said, swaying. "Leave me the hell alone."
"Why should I, Vipere?" The Spy buttoned his cuffs. "Why should any of us leave you alone? You're here. We're here. If you do not remember, we have been fucking like gymnasts for the last few weeks. Will you run hot and cold?" He laughed, a grim sound that had little humor and less happiness in it. "We won't chase your moods, Vipere, and we won't leave you alone, either."
The Spy straightened his cuffs, shaking his arms to align the seams on his sleeves. "If you won't let us be kind, Vipere, we certainly do not have to be." Vipere, he added silently, if no one will let me use pleasure, I am skilled enough to wield the knife instead.
She grimaced at him. "Don't confuse fucking with ownership, Sneak. We all know I'm leaving eventually." Her arms spread wide and she rocked back on her heels, dizzy. "I'll be leaving all this behind. And then you'll have to seduce some other woman." The Cook glared at him. "It's not even as if I'm special. I'm just convenient."
The Spy pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stabbed it viciously out into the sink before turning to her. "Convenient? Yes, Vipere, you are convenient in a way." He reached down, framing himself in his slacks with his free hand to watch her eyes fix on the line of his zipper. With a despairing laugh, he leaned in close, breath smoky and bitter. "And you are a world of problems in every other way. So no, not convenient. You have no idea how many problems I am forced to solve for you."
He looked at her—drunk as Demo on a bad day, hair scraped painfully into a bun, two layers of shirts, and his work undone. "You have," he said, voice a rusty saw blade, "no idea what I had to do to give you any measure of peace." La Mère, he raged silently, la Mère, what I learned for you no man should know. I dug it up from memory for this foolish girl, and it did not help.
She put the paddle in the sink, on top of his cigarette butt, and scrubbed her face with the back of her hand, smearing the cream up her cheek. "Don't," she said, voice clearing with anger, "pretend that I made you do anything. You did it because you liked it."
The Cook's eyes glittered unsteadily with her breath, fingers digging into the ledge of the counter she leaned against. "Fuck, apparently we're all going to have a moment of brutal honesty—maybe I've been fucking you all like a gymnast because I'm fucking lonely. Maybe you're not special to me, just convenient."
His head snapped back, the startled rejoinder acidic. "Have I ever told you differently? Have I bought you roses, Rosie? Have I ever taken you out to dinner, or come home to you to tell you of my day? Have I told you"—he reached out and grabbed her apron, winding it around his fist and pulling her in, stumbling—"that you are anything but a toy?"
"Vipere," he panted, "you lie to yourself, and you lie to me. You will reject us first, because you think we will reject you."
His breath was scalding hot on her face, and with a shiver she realized her head was turned up, seeking a kiss. Her body had responded with a spill of heat, softening and moving towards his. He looked down at her body yearning toward him, with an instant of acute pain. When he looked up, his eyes were wild with rage.
"Coward," he hissed. "Run away from yourself, hating yourself all the while, rather than admit that you want to be here."
Her face fell, tears instantly gathering on her alcohol-numbed cheeks.
The Spy stepped back, pulling his hand from her apron hard enough to send her staggering. "No, I won't leave you alone, you little fool. And I won't let you run from this either." He glared at her and gripped the counter. "You have killed and you have died. You have stepped over a line few have stepped over, and it thrilled you." His face was feral. "But be afraid."
The Spy turned, speaking over his shoulder. "Be afraid of what kind of person you will be when you have learned to kill easily, when you have gone and there is no respawn. Perhaps, Vipere, the fact that we are here is a mercy to the rest of the world."
The Cook watched him walk away, shoulders thrown back and sank to her knees, scraping the dough from the floor.
The Soldier looked around the kitchen. The room had slowly become messier and messier—when the Cook wasn't out in the field taking pot shots at the other team or cooking, she certainly wasn't cleaning. Spatters of soup and sauce tie-died the stovetop, already dully gleaming with grease. The food had been burned, or undercooked, or simply raw. He had taken to eating MREs again out of survival, and who knows what everyone else had been eating.
The Cook herself ate very little, nothing he could see many days. She merely picked at the food, seemingly as disinterested as she might have been had it been made of plastic. He could see the grease accumulating in her hair, darkening it from auburn to a muddy, dark brown. The last week, as far as he could tell, she'd simply gone to bed by herself, and everyone had let her.
The Medic and Heavy seemed to be fighting. The Spy made cutting little remarks to the Cook about the food and her need to bathe. The Sniper said nothing, merely watched her during meal time. The Demo was even surlier than normal, which for him was incredible. The Pyro was himself. Always and ever himself—he smiled less often now that the flow of sweets had slowed to a trickle and stopped. He ate with the same arm curled around his plate, as if he expected it to be stolen out from under him. The Engineer simply ate at some other time. They hadn't seen him for days.
The Soldier knew it was his fault. If he hadn't had the nightmare—if he hadn't nearly strangled her to death, she would probably be better. He had no idea how to apologize, how to fix her and them. No gift would soothe away what he had done, and nothing he could do could possibly express how sorry he was, but he had to do something. Rolling up his sleeves, he dug under the sink until he found rags and bleach. He had scrubbed the stove clean and was started on the floor near the stove when the Spy walked in.
"Are you doing her job for her, Solly?" He looked around the kitchen and sneered. "Leave it. She will come out of it on her own, or she will not. All you will do is prolong it."
"Prolong it? I can't apologize enough to make it go away." The Soldier's shoulders hunched, tension wringing bleach from the rag in his hands to spatter on the floor before him. "I can't make her okay again."
The Spy looked down at him. "Can you glue back together what's broken inside you and her both? Physician," he said, tone mocking, "fix thyself."
The Soldier stood up heavily, drawing himself up and letting the rag slump to his side. "You know, I've always thought you were a shit. You really know what to say, don't you?"
The Spy gave a mocking little bow, eyeing him. "Solly, my business is secrets and the leverage they give you."
"It isn't as if any of the rest of you are helping her," the Soldier growled. "What's it to you if I clean the place?"
The Spy stiffened. His mouth opened and closed silently for a moment, too outraged to speak. When he finally summoned the ability to do so, his voice was white hot. "You were there, you suicidal fool. Do you have any idea what kind of training you must endure to know how to do what I did for her? They turn you inside out, violating every single part of you so that you know in your bones how the mind may be torn." He looked the Soldier up and down. "How did they train you? Did they just run you in circles and hand you a gun? Did they do any training with the lump between your ears?"
The Soldier took a single step forward, pointing at the Spy. "Do you really think that helped her? Does it look like it helped her?"
"For that, Solly, you must blame the Doctor," the Spy said, a shadow crossing his face. "I do not know what he did, but she is…. Some burdens cannot be borne by others. She will come to resent you if you interfere too much."
"I nearly strangled her," the Soldier groaned. "How can I not try to show her how sorry I am?"
After a moment, the Spy cackled. "Is that what you think is wrong with her? Dig deeper, Solly, in you both. Dig deeper than a bad dream and a restless bed." He crossed his arms low on his chest. "Start with childhood, for the both of you."
The Soldier's hands balled into fists, dropping the towel. "Don't get too deep, Sneak, or you'll find more nasty than even you can deal with."
The Spy smiled, wryly. "My dear Solly, you might be amazed what I can handle." He let his eyes drift slowly down the Soldier's tense body to the loose crotch of his pants. "A little something to help you remember."
The Soldier blushed up to his hairline and took another step forward. "Everything is a weapon for you Sneak, isn't it?"
"If you force me to defend myself, Solly, you will find I do so quite well." The Spy's eyes glittered with amusement. "But I meant what I said. You can't take this from her. You can only make it harder. If you have any pity for her at all, you'll let her work through it without interference."
The Spy looked down at the dirty counters. "The inside reflects the outside, Solly. You probably don't remember when you were broken, but I bet it was in such filth."
The Soldier stood, riveted to the spot in rigid terror—the cockroaches pouring out of the kitchen sink every night, onto the dishes his father was too proud to clean, sleeping with his pillow over his head so they would not crawl into his ears and nose—the little apartment came clear again, trying to swallow him. For a moment he was small: thin, pipe-stem arms held up against his father's calloused fists. Eaten up by despair, by the fear and despair of wondering if this was his fault.
"Tell me something, Soldier, how did you glue yourself together? Did someone do it for you? Or did it merely… scab over, with time?" The Spy lit a cigarette and took a long drag before continuing. "And she rips it right open, doesn't she? Holding someone so much like you, so similarly broken." The smoke trickled out of his mouth, curling and feathering against his face. "I would tell you to fix the wound, but it has probably scarred enough to make that difficult. You can't fix her to fix yourself, Solly."
The Soldier's stomach heaved and he gagged.
"The past comes back, does it not? It bubbles up because you never had the courage to face it. If I may give you a little advice, Solly, it is this: you can't run from your problems." The Spy walked to the sink and tapped his ashes into it. "You have to face them."
The Soldier found his voice, hoarse with outrage and bile. "And how would you know, Sneak?"
The Spy looked at him blandly, blinking, and replied. "Are you really so blind, Solly, so preoccupied by your own problems, that you cannot recognize the voice of experience?"
"Very well," the Spy said, "let me make myself clear. I am the voice of experience. Stop hiding from your problems. Murder is not therapy, no matter how enjoyable it may be." He put the cigarette out and washed his fingers. "You cannot hide, you cannot avoid, and you cannot run. You can only face them today and tomorrow."
The Spy dried his fingers on one of the clean towels the Soldier had stacked on the counter. "I've paid my dues. I keep paying my dues. You and she have to pay yours." He pointed at the door. "Now, get the hell out of the kitchen."