It didn't happen often. It happened just seldom enough that he never anticipated it, and it blindsided him every time.

"Engineer?" said a muffled voice.

The Engineer paused in his work, studying the machine that had been his best distraction lately. A robotic hand, strong metal fingers curled in on itself like spider's legs. They moved ever so little on their own as he watched. "Yeah, Pyro?"

Behind him, he heard her cough, and it got lost in the hum of his workshop's lights and the birdsong coming in through the workshop's open windows. She cleared her throat, then said, slow and thick through the filters, "...Where am I?"

A long moment passed as the Engineer tried to steel himself for what he knew was coming.

He turned, forcing himself to keep a straight expression. The sight that met him was the usual one: Pyro sitting slouched on a crate in a corner she had claimed for her own, a corner plastered with stickers and bright things. Her mask was off now, still a legendarily rare sight. As far as Engineer knew he was still the only one to have ever seen it. "How d'you mean?"

The confusion in her voice was overwhelming. "I ... this isn't your house."

This. This again. Engineer swallowed down the sigh building in his throat. "We're at work, Smoky."

"... oh. Oh," she repeated, craning her neck to peer down at her bulky blue suit. She was quiet for a long time, just examining herself. Then she turned to look at her surroundings, at the crayon drawings and candy wrappers taped all over the walls within her reach. A bewildered little noise slipped out of her mask as she picked up a picture that had slipped to the floor. It was a rainbow of childish depictions of childish things, of unicorns and kittens and God only knew what else. Engineer hated looking at them. "… what are these?"

How long had it been?

How long had it been since that morning he had walked into his workshop only to find the Pyro covered in dried blood and asleep in the grip of the poisoned dispenser? For a good five seconds he had just gaped down at her, at the black and burnt-out sparklers he had purchased on the Fourth that littered the ground around her. She still held one in her gloved hand, even unconscious, and didn't let go of it as he shook her awake, too rough, too hard.

It felt like it took much too long for her to move, to groan and feebly push his hand off her. What in the hell did she think she was doing, he wanted to know. How long had she been here? Didn't she damn well know what was good for her?

… What had she done?

But she answered none of his questions. She scarcely even paid attention to him, her head constantly turning to point her lenses at something else. The only way he could get her to look at him was to physically turn her face toward him, and when he did she made muted, mumbling protests before lifting each of his individual fingers off.

The last of his patience was vanishing when the war sirens pierced the air. The Pyro's head jerked up and for a moment she was perfectly still. Then a delighted exclamation too warped to understand rattled out of her mask. She was on her feet in a heartbeat, and before Engineer knew it she had taken his hand and was dragging him out toward the battlements.

On the field she was a monster. Engineer had never seen her so enthusiastic in her work, or so brutal. He had been watching from the battlements when she found the RED spy, trying to sneak into their front door. She pinned him to the wall with her axe, and torched him limb by limb, still alive. Engineer had left before she was done, the sound too much for him just then.

And again, later, when he was scrambling to get his sentry rebuilt after the enemy heavy had gunned it down. Sniper was behind him, firing off arrow after arrow into the crowd of REDs pushing through the doorway, and across the courtyard the rest of the team was surging out to defend the base. The place was a hive of screaming men and gunfire, and Engineer had just turned the last screw on the new machine when a muted war cry split the air amid the chaos. He looked up just in time to see the Pyro leap from the catwalk, down between the RED heavy and his medic. She separated them with two perfectly-aimed blasts of compressed air, hurling the heavy into Demoman's sticky trap and the enemy medic into the stairs. The heavy went down (or up, in the air and in pieces, rather), and that left the medic the only man left alive. Before anything else could be done the Pyro was upon him, boot planted square on his chest.

There was an uncharacteristic silence amongst the team as they watched her jam her flare gun as far down his throat as it would go. Engineer looked away when she brought out her axe, and tried to ignore the screaming.

It cut short soon enough. When he searched for her again, she was already skipping away.

Skipping.

The whole day all she was a picture of delight, singing to herself, laughing and shaking her flamethrower over her head after every victory. When the end-hours whistle came and the Administrator announced them the winners of the day, she whooped and caught up the nearest teammate in a bear hug. (The Spy kept his composure remarkably well, too—at least, he did until the Soldier declared a patriotic American victory dog-pile and joined them.)

The Engineer couldn't take it. The sight that had greeted him that morning had gnawed at him all day, and his fears only multiplied the longer he went without answers. He cornered the Pyro outside as they all made their way back inside the base, waited until he was sure they were alone. When only the cooling evening air and crickets served as their company, it all spilled out. "Okay," he said, "Pyro, come on now, what the hell were you doin' in there last night? What were you thinkin', what were you possibly…"

She looked at him. Just looked at him, head a little to one side, none of the tension lining her stance in the way he'd grown used to in confronting her about anything. She said nothing to him, absolutely nothing, even as his voice got louder and sharper.

He had been about to start shaking her when her head whipped down and to the side, the only sign of life since this had started. Before he could do anything, she had dropped to all fours, face level with a tiny grasshopper at their feet.

Thirty seconds later she had it by one oversized leg, dangling over her flamethrower's pilot light. She made cooed at it as it struggled and smoked, until it was nothing but a tiny, blackened corpse. Then, with great care, she put it back down on the ground, and trotted off.

It was the same for the rest of the week. She tore the battlefield apart, to the point where from his sentry nests Engineer could see REDs going out of their way to avoid her, going so far as into jump into the canal, where she had never followed them before. Now she did. He could hear her muffled shouting echo out of the sewers quite often these days.

Her newly-acquired glee never left her. She made buildings out of the books in the common room instead of reading them, built a blanket fort over the back of the couch with chairs stolen from the kitchen. He walked in on Scout kicking it to pieces a day later and didn't have the heart to stop him. "Pyro'll be upset," was all he said, tired.

"Pyro, screw Pyro, what good's that mumblin' bozo ever fuckin' done me, nothin' that's what, God, some'a us was sittin' on these. Keep your freak on a leash, okay, Jesus." Scout picked up a chair in either arm and stalked past him with them.

As luck would have it, Pyro wandered into the common room again not two minutes later. She found the blankets strewn on the ground and over the one remaining chair, and the very first thing she did was drag Engineer over and make a great fuss, pointing and mumbling. He'd hardly been able to get a word out before Scout came back. Pyro had ignored him until he picked up the last chair.

"Hht's mmne!"

Scout gave her the most withering look Engineer had ever seen off him, until Pyro wrapped both hands around one of the chair legs and pulled. Scout yelled and jerked it out of her grip, snarled something at her.

To Engineer's shock, she backed off. She stood uncertainly before them for a moment, hands curled in front of her chest, and then she ran out of the room.

They stared after her for a few seconds. Finally Scout snorted, hefting the chair back up.

"Good freakin' riddance."

It was only the beginning, and as the days passed the realization that Pyro was no longer the woman Engineer knew began to close in on him.

He denied it as long as he could. This was Pyro, after all, and if Pyro was anything she was a survivor. Something as moronic as a spiked dispenser wouldn't take her down. It couldn't. It'd wear off in a few more respawns, he told himself. It'd wear off in a few more days. A few more weeks….

The night he came into his workshop and found her playing with his sprockets and gears and wearing one of his gloves like a hat was the night his fraying temper snapped. He'd yelled her down, ripped the machinery from her hands, called her a lunatic and an idiot. God in heaven, he just wanted her to respond. He would have welcomed another punch to the face, a screaming match, anything to tell him that the Pyro—the arsonist, the whip-smart, unbalanced arsonist he had known was still there somewhere under the mask.

She had cowered before him and hidden under the workbench. Hadn't moved for three hours, until Engineer surrendered and coaxed her out with candy and soft words. Afterwards she parked herself on a crate in the corner, amusing herself with his spare parts until she fell asleep. He ignored her the best he could, until around four in the morning, when his blueprints were starting to look fuzzy and his hand hurt from holding the pencil.

She was all there was left for him to focus on. The only thought that kept running through his head was she did it on purpose.

God, what could he have missed?

The next day he gathered up his plans and notes and showed them to Medic, and Medic took one look at them and asked him what the devil he was on about. "It's Pyro, doc," he said. "They've—they got in t'that bum dispenser. It's, they ain't right no more."

"And?"

"... and it's messed 'em up bad, Medic, damn it! Don't you tell me you ain't noticed!"

"I have noticed Herr Pyro being especially ... effective in their fighting lately," Medic answered, rolling up the blueprints and handing them back to him. "That is all. I am sorry it bothers you so much, but as I have told you—there is no way to undo the effect, not in the way you are looking for. Whatever it has done to the Pyro is permanent." He gave Engineer a curious sort of look. "They seem happier, if anything. Are you sure it is a bad thing that has happened here?"

The Engineer was not a man of senseless violence. There was no use in destroying perfectly good technology, especially that which could be reverse-engineered. But that night he took the dispenser out back with a sledgehammer and Demo's strongest whiskey. By the time he was done, the dispenser was scrap, and he couldn't walk straight.

Naturally it was the Pyro that found him like that, find him sitting on what was left of the Godforsaken thing and too drunk to control himself proper. She sat down on the ground in front of him and watched him while he apologized, over and over, frustrated and bewildered and guilty. He wasn't even sure what he was apologizing for, except what he hadn't done. That he hadn't watched her more. That he hadn't gone after her that night in the kitchen.

He'd failed her. He'd failed her so badly.

He thought he had gotten it out of his system when Pyro put her head to one side, like a dog trying very hard to understand. Then she looked around, plucked a sad, dried-out dandelion from the barren dirt, and held it out to him, saying something that was lost under the mask. When he didn't take it right away she pushed it against his chest, repeating herself. She did it twice more before he understood what she was saying.

"Don't cry. It's okay. Don't cry."

He took the flower. His eyes stung as he did.

Time had passed, and he was left with the Pyro turning the drawing over in her hands. "Engineer?"

"Nothin'," he said, wiping his hands on a rag, carefully not looking at her. "Ain't nothin'. Don't you mind that. You feelin' okay?"

"I … I guess," she said, looking at the paper a little longer before laying it back down among the others. "Where's Shark?"

"Back in your room, where you left it."

"Oh. That's good."

These were the worst days, the moments when the regressed child she had become would falter, just for a little while. The barely-there shell it left behind, a pale shadow of the arsonist, made him sick. She was a puppet in a part, a television rerun. By now Engineer knew all her lines. He hated every single one.

"Where's Tobias?"

Especially that one. Every time, without fail. Engineer heaved a sigh. "Not here."

"Where is he?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

That quieted her, left her sitting there looking lost. Just like always. Tobias, and her flamethrower, were the only two things she ever asked after. He'd still never figured out who Tobias had been to her. He supposed he never would.

After a while, Engineer sighed, tossing the oil rag he'd been fiddling with aside. He turned back to his work, twisting at joints and wires. "You hungry?" She shook her head. "Right, well. It'll be dinner before too long."

"Okay," she said distantly. "Engineer?"

"Mhm."

"Tell ... tell Scout that ... can you apologize to Scout for me? I didn't, I never got to ... I... "

Engineer went still. That—that was new. She had never said that before. He turned, a thousand new questions bursting into his head. "Can I what?"

He turned just in time to see her stare down at the mask and put it back on. He got no more answers. Instead the Pyro tilted her head to the side, meeting his gaze for a moment. Then her attention wandered, lighting at once upon the same drawing she had just put down. She made an awed kind of sound, grabbing it up. A few seconds later she had found the crayon set that Heavy had given her a few months ago, and Engineer was forgotten.

- end -

Dedicated to Noel B.

Thank you.

Part one of four.
There Is A Season is continued in Cryoablation.