The Pyro scowled down at the table. Her gun was in pieces.

Before BLU she'd never realized weapons had to be cleaned. Maintained, okay, but cleaned? Even her flamethrower had to go through with it, and it hurt, taking Shark apart. But Engineer had insisted, and sat down with her and her shotgun several times in the last week or so to show her how to unscrew the stock, the right way to slide out the firing pin. She was left on her own to figure the best way to clean the flamethrower.

So there she was at two in the afternoon on a Saturday, gloves off and fingers greasy with oil, trying to remember if she'd forgotten any part of the process. Yesterday she had forgotten which team she was on, in the middle of a fucking firefight, and it didn't even occur to her to look down at her own suit for five minutes. She couldn't trust herself anymore.

"Hey, Sparky! Catch!"

She looked up just in time to get socked in the chest with something small and solid. She squawked, scarcely grabbing it before it rolled down the gap between her and the table. Whatever it was, it was cold. The word Schlitz was printed across it in bright, curving letters, and someone had taped a straw to it.

She looked up, and found the Scout leaning against the doorway. He was holding something just like what she had, and he was leaning on his bat. He never went anywhere without that thing.

Scout lifted an eyebrow at her. "You ain't gonna tell me you're some kinda beer snob are ya, c'mon, I know Schlitz ain't the best shit in the world, I mean it's godawful really but they don't got the good stuff 'round here cuz it's freakin' New Mexico, whaddya expect?"

She pulled off the straw. "Oh. Thanks." What the hell was she supposed to do with this?

Her teammate pushed off the doorframe and walked closer—no, not walked, swaggered. Scout didn't know how to just plain walk, she'd figured that out pretty quick. He sat down next to her on the bench, easy as anything, and took a swig. Then he glanced over her dismantled shotgun. "Man, I keep puttin' off doin' my guns, Heavy'd tear me a new asshole if he knew. Soldier an' Engie too probably, but it's like, whatever, they come back without no blood on 'em or nothin' at respawn, they work just fine, ain't like my life's gonna be over if shit misfires or somethin', heh, am I right?"

The Pyro had not even opened her mouth to try and get a word in edgewise. It was largely impossible.

And, Scout unnerved her.

Boston. That was the problem. He was Boston, Boston made flesh, and simply being around him made her head ring with foggy, frayed memories that were locked behind frosted glass. They blurred together and it was like seeing the world from a carousel, all smeared colors and smells and sounds that never resolved themselves. A hardware store. Cracked pavement in summer. A lot with yellow grass. Why had she been in Boston? Why did it matter so much?

"You dead in there? I said, hey, don't that filter come off none, I gotcha a straw for a reason."

She jerked back to life, head lifting. The beer. Right. She popped the tab. That alone seemed to satisfy Scout, and he launched right back into his monologue as she tried to figure out if she actually could manipulate any of the mask's filters open.

With some fiddling, she managed to crack one of them, a hinge she hadn't known was there swinging slowly out. Cool air touched her face, and with it crept in the nausea of her secret, the paranoia. Every inch of mangled flesh suddenly ached and burned and throbbed. In a panic, she snapped it shut again.

Scout didn't notice. "Anyway, yeah, hey, jus' figured uh, I wasn't bein' the friendliest for a while there, don't know you none, you an' me we're the newest ones here, right, I only started like two months ago, gotta stick togetha, yeah? Ain't nothin' personal, had uh, just I got some bad history with … well it, it ain't a big deal, it's, it's old news. Anyway, uh, just figured it'd be good, gettin' you in as part of the team, I mean really in, cuz y'know, right, I'm kinda the team leader, see, keepin' everyone togetha like, dunno where the hell they'd be without me. Runnin' around with their shorts on their heads I figure." She eased the filter back open, half an inch at most, and slipped the straw in. When she took a sip, she didn't sputter it back out, but it was a near thing. Scout wasn't kidding when he said it was godawful.

She noticed the room was quiet, and glanced back at her teammate. Scout had caught her opening the filter, was watching her intently. "So," he said, "likin' it here?" She nodded. "Oh hey, yeah, saw you beat the shit outta the other heavy today, holy hell, man, that was awesome, where'd you get a freakin' mailbox?"

Oh, right. The mailbox, all rusty ragged edges and sharp plastic. She shrugged, trying to choke down another mouthful of the swill she had been given. "It was just in the corner. Guess someone threw it over the fence." Her voice made strange echoes on its way out of the mask.

Scout went still—kind of leaned forward as if trying to get a better look at her. She met his gaze, though he'd never be able to tell. "Yeah?" he prompted, after a weird pause. "He uh, yeah, he threw your axe into the water, right?"

The Pyro swallowed more beer to force down the rising bile in her throat. "Uh-huh."

"Y'know he usually won't follow you if y'jump in there? He's too friggin' fat, an' his gun—"

"No," she cut in sharply, shaking her head best she could with the straw in her filter. "No." In the corner of her eye she could make out Scout giving her a Look.

"Alright, sure," he started up again, slow, "big rubber suit an' a flamethrower, ain't great for water, yeah, I can see it." He trailed off. "Right, yeah, anyway, the way you beat his stupid head in? Freakin' beautiful. I wanna frame that memory an' put it on my wall. Say, you got a light?"

Did she have a light. That had to be a joke. (Was it a joke? Was she supposed to laugh?) She fished her Zippo out of the little ammo pouch on her suit's belt, contemplated the weight of it for a moment.

"Campfire, got a minute?"

They both looked up. Engineer was leaning into the room, the tilt of his mouth something the Pyro recognized as his something-is-wrong-here look. "Sup Engie," Scout said.

"Howdy, Scout. Pyro—you mind comin' with me a minute? Got … somethin' you should see."

Well. Okay. The Pyro set down the beer and snapped the filter shut again. She was never opening that thing again.

"Hey so wait can I use that?" Scout asked, jabbing at her lighter with a finger. She looked at him, a cigarette already dangling from his mouth, and then down at the Zippo.

Her throat tightened. It was her lighter. Her lighter.

But she was on a team, now, right? And Engineer had given it back. Scout was giving her an odd look now.

It took, probably, too long, but she dropped it into Scout's outstretched palm.

"Well, what?" the Pyro said.

Engineer's workshop at Teufort was—well, not unlike his workshop at home, his garage. Lots of concrete and scrap everywhere. There were more dismantled sentries and dispensers, and countless other things she couldn't even begin to imagine uses for. From her seat on an upended, rusting wheelbarrow that was hosting a variety of large springs on its handles, she watched Engineer as he sort of puttered around, putting tools away, sorting metal heaps. Delaying, she realized after a time. That wasn't like him.

"What?" she repeated, louder, and the Engineer slowly stopped wrapping a nest of wires into a neat ball. He straightened his back, and exhaled.

"Was wonderin'," he said at last, dropping the wires into a drawer. "You ain't been, say ... seein' things, have you?"

What. "Seeing things. What, apart from Klondike bars? Ghosts? Unicorns?"

"Hell, Pyro, I really can't get a word you're sayin."

She shrugged. Too bad. The Engineer looked at her a while, then sighed and shook his head. "Just, yes or no?"

Has she been seeing things. "Yes."

He'd put his hand in his chin, leaning against a workbench, studying her. "A lot, you'd say?" She shrugged. "I had wondered. Been gettin' a little of that myself. Well, what I did was I talked to Medic about it. He's the one pioneered that heal-beam stuff in the first place, gave me the tools to put it in my dispensers? And he ah. He don't do things conventionally, as it were. His idea of a medical trial is t'drop a new chemical in the equipment and see what happens without tellin' nobody."

He shifted, and dragged something out from behind the workbench. It was bloodstained and dingy-looking, and a large "X" had been crossed on its front with red electrical tape. "Remember our buddy here?"

"The dispenser?"

"Right. The one I fixed you up with." He hesitated. "Thing is I guess Medic did somethin' to the output he gave me for this one. It don't ... it messes with the brain, is what I mean. Hallucinations, was his word. An' memory loss, with prolonged exposure. Permanent."

"...Oh," she said.

"Now I'm on Medic's case about tryin' to fix it, but he don't … seem to think it's reversible," he said, shoving the box back behind the bench. "But maybe we'll get lucky an' it just ... won't be an issue for ya. Either way, I figured you oughta know." He looked up at her, then, and even she could read the worry in the way he was chewing his lip. "And I wanted to apologize. For any harm I may've done you."

When she said nothing, just got up and made her way over to look at the thing that had saved her life and likely given her brain damage in one swoop, Engineer stepped out of her way. He leaned back against the workbench, watching. The Pyro about jumped out of her skin when he lay a hand on her shoulder a few seconds later. Twisting her head around, she found herself face to face with his goggles.

"You let me know if things start gettin' weird for you, all right?" Engineer said.

"Um. Sure."

That was when the door slammed open. Engineer jumped. The Pyro did, too, twisting away from the dispenser to see what the noise was.

The noise was, in fact, Scout, knuckles white on the door handle. He was clutching something in his free hand, and didn't move an inch when Engineer said, "Somethin' you need, boy?"

Scout's eyes jerked from the Pyro to the Engineer. His grip loosened, barely. "Just," he started, "... wanted to get the fire marshal here his lighter back."

Her lighter. The Pyro eased forward, and held out her hand expectantly.

She wasn't expecting the sharp, hollow stare that bore down on her when she looked Scout in the face, worlds different from the kid she had already grown used to. He shoved the lighter into her hand without a word and shouldered past her.

Bewildered, she peered back at him as he flung himself down on the wheelbarrow and pulled off his headset, passing it to Engineer and starting to drill him with questions about it.

Weird, she thought, and left.

The Pyro left, and Scout stopped talking. Literally stopped, cut himself off midsentence, jerked his head up like a gopher to stare at the door. Engineer had never seen him shut up so instantly.

Half a moment later Scout was on his feet again, pacing, rubbing his hands together like he didn't know what to do with them. "Okay," he started, "alright, okay, how much do you know about that guy?"

"What?"

"The freakin' Pyro, you an' him are always freakin' palin' around, what, am I wrong?"

God, it always took him a second to adjust to his teammates talking about Pyro like she was a man. "Well—I guess so—"

"I gotta," Scout started, and cut himself off again, running a hand through his hair. "Just. Look, Engie, have you seen him? Under the mask?"

"I have not."

"Fuck."

"Watch your mouth."

"Oh fer chrissakes don't pull this with me hardhat, I ain't fuckin' kiddin' here, just, I need to know if Pyro's a girl or not, okay?"

"And I'm tellin' you I don't have a clue," Engineer said, the lie coming easily. "That's Pyro's business. Anyway, don't seem likely there'd be a whole lot of women in our line'a work, does it? Runnin' around in a rubber mask and burning people to death with a home-made flamethrower? What's even got you wonderin' that?"

The Scout went very still.