The dog tags were dark with stuck-on ash in the embossed spaces, scorched on the edges. They wouldn't lighten no matter how much she rubbed at them, but she didn't stop trying for an hour. When the ghost started laughing at her, she gave up and just stared at them instead.
There were letters on the metal. She knew they were letters, but they may as well have belonged to another alphabet. She couldn't read them anymore. Sometimes she could pick out their individual shapes, if she looked long enough. T, she had gotten that far, and an O … then her mind would fail her.
It was the same everywhere else. All of the words in the books Engineer had given her seemed to smear together into swampy blurs of ink, and even the simple signs directing movement around the base were indecipherable jumbles of color now.
The Pyro tossed the tags onto the bed, next to her axe and flamethrower, and slumped down onto the mattress, heavy with exhaustion. Sleep had not visited her for the last two days, and now the team was paying for it; she spent more time cycling through respawn than fighting now, and her latest adventure in guilt-induced hallucination had left her cowering before another false corpse while the RED spy escaped with the intelligence.
Next to her, the ghost was fiddling with the tags. (He wasn't. If she tried, if she really tried, she could still see them where she had dropped them on the blankets, fuzzy and indistinct.) "Ever think about how much you probably fucked 'im up?" he said.
She opened her mouth, and shut it again immediately. Her will was weakening. She had tried so hard not to respond to the ghost, ever since her outburst in the kitchen, but she was breaking. She was so tired. It had been sixteen hours since she had been coaxed into eating. And he just wouldn't stop talking.
The Pyro wet her lips, staring straight ahead.
"Ferreal, though," the ghost said. " 'Member what he looked like when you saw him last year? Yeah you do. Straight up thought he was, what, like sixteen? Little kid, doll. Now he kills people for a livin'."
Scout on her doorstep, his bat over his shoulder, looking at her like he wasn't quite sure what to make of her. Scout crowing in victory as he gunned the RED spy down. Scout bent over her in the half-dark, eyes alight with hate and fury as he wrapped his fingers around her neck.
She couldn't help herself. "The first time I saw him he was hitting baseballs into a mob," she said, her voice a pathetic croak. "And, and you were—"
"Shut up," he said. She withered under the command, and hated herself for it. "Big fuckin' difference between that and beating a guy to death with a bat. Anyway, what I meant was these." The dog tags clattered in her ear as he shook them at her—they were on the bed, she could see them on the bed—"He's wearing my dog tags, firebug. I got seven brothers an' outta all of them he's the one got my tags. What's that say to you?"
Without another word she seized the tags from the bed, her glove passing through the ghost's knee as she did. It was so hard to think. All she could come up with was that the tags belonged to Scout, and she needed to give them back. Maybe that would fix something.
"You ain't serious," sneered the ghost as she got up, winding the chain through her fingers. She pocketed it, and as an afterthought, threaded her axe through her belt, too. "There ain't nothin' you can do about this. You ain't gonna get forgiveness."
The Pyro said, "I know that," and left.
She didn't know what she was doing. God, why had she ever thought this was a good idea?
It was well past dinner. Down the hallways, the Pyro could just hear the rest of the team now and then, passing the evening in whatever ways they would. But she was at the barracks, and the barracks were empty, except for Scout. He was sprawled back on his bed when she got there, the low buzz of a radio on the ground his only company. "He ain't been much for socializin' lately," Engineer had said when she asked him where he was a few minutes ago. "Don't quite know why."
The ghost was nowhere in sight, and that at least was a small blessing in light of what she was about to do. Hell, she didn't even know why she was doing it. It wasn't like the rest of the team wouldn't recognize Scout's tags if she just left them out somewhere.
But here she was, anyway, lurking in the doorway.
She edged inside, footsteps heavy. Scout's bunk was second-closest to the door, its frame drowning in magazine tearouts of baseball players and pinup girls. He noticed her almost at once (how could he not), and sat up. Frankly she hadn't realized it was possible for someone to sit up menacingly, but apparently, you could. "The fuck is it, mumbles?"
She could have sworn she had thought of something to say before she got here. Instead she just stood there, picking at the edge of one of the posters. Scout himself sat on the mattress, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and glaring at her. "Hey, sorry, did I stutter? You don't got no business bein' here, you got your own friggin' room, so whaddya want? Didja come to freakin' stare at me or what, spit it out, I ain't got time to waste on freaks like you."
"Um," she started, hand sinking slowly to her ammo pouch. Her ammo pouch where she no longer kept a lighter. All her gloved fingers found were the snapped length of chain. "Your, uh—I found—"
"Yo, what? Look, dumbass," he said, getting up. He jabbed a finger into her chest, lip curling. "I ain't even gonna talk t'you if I can't friggin' understand you, alright, you can just march on outta here—"
She ignored him. "I … I found these," she said, digging the tags out and holding them out to him. Scout stopped short. Shit, how long had it been since the tower? A week? Two? "They're yours. Right?"
At first Scout didn't say anything. His eyes locked on the tarnished metal hanging from her hand, darted up to her face, then down again. His jaw set. "Haha, hoo boy," the ghost said, even as she watched Scout's mouth twist into a sneer, "oh, man, you went an' whiffed it this time, doll, you—"
Scout ripped them out of her hand, knuckles going white he clenched them so hard, and the Pyro flinched when his other hand shot out to fist in her collar. "You the one took these off me?" he growled. The ghost was still over his shoulder, grinning now, like this was the funniest joke in the world. "These tags is mine, got it, you don't ever touch these—you God-damn creep, I oughta teach you a lesson right now is what I oughta do—"
"Scout—"
She heard the break more than felt it when his fist connected with her cheekbone. Her head jerked sideways and she was half-limp in his grip until he did it again. Her teeth cracked down on her tongue and blazing needles of pain shot through her entire face with the second blow. A high, pained keen escaped her, and Scout let go to shove her backwards. She staggered and hit the opposite bunk, hunching over.
"Funny thing, y'know," he said, drawing nearer, and the Pyro couldn't tell if it was the ghost or Scout speaking now. "Found somethin' a yours too, found that lighter of yours on me the other night, that real wrecked Zippo? Bet you been missin' that, huh? Ain't that a shame? You ain't gettin' it back, cuz y'know somehow I don't think it was even yours to start with, was it, bitch? Whaddya think, am I wrong here?"
The bunk clanged behind her as she tried to get away, groping for her axe. Scout, or the ghost, sneered. "Oh, what, you gonna kill me? Just like before? That's how you fuckin' deal with your problems, right, murderin' 'em?"
He went at her again, but it was sloppy. This time she managed to catch his fist. In the same movement she ripped out her axe and barreled forward, the ghost howling in her ear even as she threw both herself and her teammate to the ground. She was a psychopath, he said, a psychopath and a murderer and beyond all redemption and she didn't even care, she had never cared, did she, did she?
She didn't know anymore.
There was a wet crunch as she landed on top of him. Scout grunted, once, and went still.
All at once everything was quiet, except the radio still humming softly by Scout's bed. Tears were crowding her eyes (and she couldn't tell if they were from pain or stress or whatever now), and she gazed down at Scout. There was a lot of red everywhere, suddenly, on Scout and her suit and the floor. She pushed herself upright. Where had her axe had gone?
Some of the red had gotten smeared on one of her lenses, somehow. She lifted a hand to wipe it away, but before she could, the glint of something silver tangled up in her fingers caught her eye. She had ripped the dog tags back out of Scout's hand.
This had turned out fantastic for her, hadn't it. She turned the tags over in her hand, and froze. Amidst the blur of indecipherable letters and numbers a single word stood clearly. A name.
Tobias.
The tags clattered as they hit the ground. A disappointed sound above her made her gasp and she looked up. The ghost—Tobias—Tobias was standing over her, and he was so impossibly tall and present. He took up the whole world. "What's that make?" he said, a few seconds later. "Three? Three times you've killed someone in my family?" She looked down at Scout, and wondered how on earth she had missed the fact her axe was lodged deep in his neck. He stared dead-eyed up at the ceiling, mouth half-open and drooling blood. "You goin' for a record?"
"… Shut up," she mumbled, pulling out the axe. God, she'd just killed someone in the barracks. She'd just half-beheaded Scout in his own sleeping quarters. She—she needed to leave. She needed to—
"You fuckin' think that's it?" said Scout.
The Pyro jumped, heart in her throat. The body still lay flat beneath her, unmoving, but his eyes had gone from glassy and empty to fixed determinedly on her. He was still alive. How was he still alive? His shirt looked more purple than blue, she could see the white of his spine through the wound, how—how…
"Hell, look at this fuckin' big-shot, comes an' jumps me in my own room, ain't got no weapon, just boom, here, let me kill you again!"
Despite herself she looked to Tobias, as if he would help her. He stood with his hands in his pockets, half-slouched, giving her the same sadistic look she had no memory of seeing him wear when he was alive.
"What? Don't look at me, moron, I ain't the one talkin' to ya."
"C'mon, fuckwit, you ain't done with me yet," Scout went on. The Pyro stared down at him, head spinning. He couldn't be alive. Not after that. "You won't never be done with me, this, you hear me, you can't keep runnin' from what you did, you ain't ever gonna escape this shit—"
"Shut up!"
In a blind rage she brought the axe down again. It bit deep into his chest, down through the ribcage, but it did not stop him. He kept carrying on, mocking and deriding her, and now Tobias was laughing and laughing at her and soon that was all Scout was doing too, and she was half-mad with pain and terror, and she pulled the axe out and swung it again, and again, and again, and again, and…
It split through the middle of Scout's face and stuck there, caught on his jawbone. Try as she might she could not free it, not with her burning arms and aching back and the way her face still screamed in agony. It was not until she gave up and slouched back, half-sobbing, that she realized she was alone.
The corpse beneath her was still and quiet, scarcely recognizable as human now. It was meat and blood and bone, pulverized and nightmarish, gaping wounds ripped through its chest and head. It lay in a vast pool of blood, and as she looked around she saw bits of gore that had flown out to splatter the walls and bunks around her.
Everything was silent, even the radio, but their laughter still echoed in her ears.
The Pyro forced herself up, numb and heavy. In one last burst of self-preservation, she wrenched her murder weapon out of her victim and slid it back into its place on her belt. Blood ran down her suit in tiny rivulets to drip to the ground. She swallowed and tasted copper.
Senseless, she staggered out of the barracks.
Medic's infirmary was always locked when he was not there. The Pyro wasn't sure how she opened it, just that when she had arrived there the hospital-green double doors had been shut, and a moment later she was inside. A snapped chain and padlock lay on the ground, and her shoulder hurt.
Her face hurt, too. More than hurt. The adrenaline had begun to wear off, and now every move she made sent horrific pain through her cracked cheekbone. She had given up trying to hold back the tears it forced to her eyes. On the field she'd been subject to more horrific injury than she had ever imagined, but it was almost always followed by the blackness of death or the ozone-hum of a medigun beam. Even Engineer's sentry back in his garage had had the courtesy to leave her unconscious. She had never had to cope with this much pain for so long, and it was making her sick and stupid. She needed Medic, Engineer even, anyone, but she was soaked in her teammate's blood. There was no one she could turn to.
Blood trailed her still as she wandered through the infirmary, not sure what she was looking for. A medigun? No—they were bound to Medic's … only Medic could activate them for some reason, so the other team couldn't use them. (Bi-o-met-tric, Engineer said. S'Aussie technology.) Even if she found one it would be useless to her. First-aid, then, pills, something, God, anything to make the agony stop.
Cabinets. The infirmary was lined with cabinets, tall things that looked like the resupply lockers in respawn. She flung one open to be greeted with shelf upon shelf of bottles and boxes, vast quantities of them, with folders and files stuffed in between. She wouldn't be able to find anything in here, she realized, but she seized up one at random anyway and peered at the label.
It was a smear of indecipherable gibberish. She didn't know what she had expected. With a frustrated snarl she put it back, and looked at another, and another, remembering the dog tag, desperate for lightning to strike twice.
Nothing.
She sank down to the ground, trying to steady her breathing. Think. Think …
Respawn. What if she just sent herself to respawn? She didn't think she had the strength left to do it with the axe, but surely there was something in here she could use. She might be able to forget what she'd done, in the bargain.
If only respawn could wipe out all her memories. She'd been happier before, not knowing.
Maddeningly slow, she circled the infirmary. In the silence she could hear things she couldn't place above, soft coos and rustling in the darkness. She thought nothing of it until a whirr of wings and a flash of white crossed her senses, and she had to choke back a wail. When she pulled herself back together she found it was just one of Medic's doves. It had come down from its roost to look at her, perching on something she hadn't noticed before—one of Engineer's dispensers. That made sense. The dispensers were like miniature mediguns in themselves. In lieu of anything to kill herself with, she made for it.
The dove took off as she came closer. She had reached the machine and was fumbling for the "on" switch when a voice echoed in the back of her mind.
It messes with the brain, is what I mean. Memory loss, with prolonged exposure. Permanent.
The Pyro stopped dead.
Unlike the infirmary, the workshop was not locked. The door eased open without so much as a squeak; of course Engineer would keep it well-oiled.
The Pyro slunk inside the dark room, her way lit only by the last few minutes of sun that seeped in through the window. She shut the door quietly behind her. On her way from the infirmary to the workshop she had overheard Scout in the common room, back from respawn—hey, okay, which one'a you fucksticks just Goddamn killed me? … Why, cuz the barracks is a freakin' crime scene is why … Wait, who was looking for me?
The game was up. Hopefully no one would think to look for her here.
She needed time.
The faulty dispenser was right where she remembered, tucked in the far corner behind a workbench. The red tape "X" was still plastered across its screen. With the last of her strength she dragged it out. When something fell from on top of it as it moved, she flinched so badly she nearly fell over.
Whatever had fallen to the floor was small, hard enough to make out in the half-light that she had to squint. It was a thin cardboard box, cheaply-made, printed with blue ink and covered in bright, stylized explosions. Chunky yellow letters wrote out something on the front, but she didn't need to be able to read them to recognize what it was. She sank down with her back to the dispenser and picked up the box of sparklers.
First things first. She had seen Engineer build up his machines enough times on the field to turn the thing on without any trouble. The dispenser clattered once, then twice, then kicked into gear with its now-familiar hum. It glowed a faint blue as the healing beams curled out and around her, and she let out a grateful sigh as the pain slowly began to fade from her face.
The sparklers rattled softly as she pulled the box open, rolling around one another. She had no lighter, she remembered as she pulled one of the fireworks out. Matches, though. She fumbled for her ammo pouch, found a matchbook, and lit a match. With shaking hands she put the flame to the red tip of the sparkler.
It hissed to life, bright and beautiful. The sparks cascaded in whorls and patterns, raining down, every tiny fire unique and distinct. They fell onto her bloodstained suit and winked out, like snowflakes in water. Her eyes were drawn to the metal left behind, charred and black, still blazing hot. Once it burned out, she put it aside, and pulled off her gloves.
The white lines on her palms and fingers greeted her, as they always had: thick bands of scar tissue, silent witnesses to something she had never been able to remember and never figured to be important. She studied them both in the blue light of the dispenser, numb and tired. Then she picked up the dead sparkler, cool now, and matched it up with the scars. The metal aligned, perfectly—first one hand, then the other.
Blinking, she put it back down and lit another. It blazed in the darkness, and she searched for the excitement she remembered they had once brought her—the very excitement that had gotten her into this, really. She lit another, then three more, and then more, until she had a whole handful of dazzling sparklers hissing in chorus.
She felt nothing.
Tobias was there, in front of her, sitting there with his long arms resting on his knees. "So," he said. She didn't look at him. "This is it? This is your big plan?"
One of the sparklers burned out. The Pyro exhaled. "Just leave me alone."
He shrugged, glancing down at her hands. A moment passed, then: "Kinda pointless, isn't it." When she did nothing but look at him, waiting, he went on. For the first time since he had appeared, his voice was level and calm, more like the voice she thought she remembered. "Cuz like I mean if you'd just let the damn sparklers fall on the other fireworks we probably wouldn't be here right now, would we."
Pointless. Saving one little pile of fireworks from going up in their faces—pointless compared to the live and loaded deathtrap she'd kept in her yard for so long. A drawn-out sigh left her. "It probably would have happened some other way. I think people just get hurt when they're around me."
"Yeah," he admitted.
They sat there like that for a while, watching the sparklers burn down. When the last one went out, she sighed and let them all clatter from her hand.
"You're not really him," she said. Tobias glanced up at her. "I mean. You're not anything like him. He wasn't—cruel," she said with as much conviction as she could muster. Pieces of him were collecting in the corners of her mind, flickering to the fore of her thoughts. The timbre of his voice, his awkward laugh, the way he looked at her. Little things. She hadn't even known him more than a week. Maybe she was wrong.
Tobias shifted where he sat, considering it. Then he shrugged, and reached out to pick up one of the dead fireworks. "Don't know. Maybe. Probably even. But it don't really matter now, does it?"
She supposed it didn't.
When the last chaotic burst of light sputtered to nothing, the Pyro set them down, inhaled, felt the strange buzz as the dispenser filled her with whatever strange thing the Medic had slipped into its healing rays. Things were getting blurry and hazy and strangely bright. When she glanced down at the burnt-out sparklers, they looked like peppermint sticks and finger bones.
A great shuddering sigh left her. "Tobias?" she said.
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."