By the time seven o'clock rolls around, Scout has never been less hungry is his whole life.
There are no clocks around base. The window in his shared rooms tells of light at all times, making it impossible to tell truly which wide of north the sun is falling. The only way left to tell is how the shadows fall, rising in front, invisible, or lagging behind.
Scout isn't all that smart. He knows what time it is, because after a while, the sleeping man rises, pulling his hat back, revealing alert eyes.
Still hunched over those twelve pathetic words, Scout is eager for an excuse to leave. "What time is it?"
The man at the door looks sourly at him. Scout suspects –silently, against his habit, that that's just what the desert has fixed the man like. He tries not to take the look personally. "S'dinner. Seven."
The door is breathing a slice of air –physically and otherwise. He needs no persuading in standing up, and following the other man out of the room and down the corridor. Despite their previous encounter, fresh as the bleeding every time Scout curls his palms, the stranger is the lesser of all other evils he's encountered: between the taciturn Miss Pauling, the iron-handed man, the manic doctor and his 'lab assistant', a few cuts are nothing.
Hell, if the rest of Scout's inmates follow the same pattern, he might do well to consider himself old friends with the new roommate.
Scout stays close on the man's elbow. He has many questions. Starting with. "You got a name, hey? I jus' figure since we're gonna be pretty close quarters an' all, it'd make sense if-"
The tall man pauses mid-stride and shakes his head. "Stop," He sighs. "No names." At first, Scout doesn't understand. No names? Nothing to call eachother by? And then when the man continues, things become transparent. "M'Sniper."
It becomes clear to him then. Just like with Medic. A class title. No different from a rank. He sticks out his hand in an over-genial manner and smiles. "I'm Scout."
He doesn't know if he's broken the rule with names. But Scout doesn't know his class title or his rank. All he has is his name, now.
The man continues walking, faster, as if trying to escape Scout. But he's not some tenacious hound snapping at the man's heels; he's just a boy with questions. He keeps up as best he can without seeming desperate or hurried. In his most breezy tone, he tries for a question. "You been here long?"
Sniper sighs in a quick, single breath. The man is precise about everything, which is why Scout struggles with the ambiguity of the answer. "A while, sure."
It's clear that the man doesn't feel like talking, but that's alright. Scout usually feels like talking enough for two or more people. "What did'ja do to get landed in here?" At the man's bemusement, Scout gestures a hand, awkwardly. There is no pleasant way to ask somebody what their greatest mistake is.
Curiously enough, it is the first time Scout thinks he has imposed on anybody. The man had been bold enough to physically assault him, and yet, the question causes him to retreat back within himself: his shoulders squaring, his movements becoming sharper and less natural.
And all he says is, "I don't really remember it."
And that's all he has to say for Scout to go silent and fall back ever-so-slightly, because he knows, just as Sniper does, that he remembers all of it. He just doesn't like to say.
-
Scout remembers asking Walt, once, before the war, why none of them ever had any time for Seymour. He has never forgotten the answer: Walt turned around and told him what his platoon leader had told him. 'Lions walk with lions, kid. Not hyenas'.
Nothing has changed, even after all these years.
At one end of the table, Scout comes to recognise the Americans. The iron-handed man sits opposite a taller, more serious figure with a no-nonsense buzz cut. At his shoulder is the gargantuan man, sitting opposite the dour Medic. They exist within their own vacuum.
Despite the fact that the others are sitting next to them, they appear separately. They are distinctly un-american. Sniper is among their number. He sits on the end and begins eating at a measured pace. He does not look up. Besides him, there is little apparent conversation between the smoker and the one covered entirely in flameproof asbestos, down to the optical gas mask. It's a hell of a spooky thing.
Some habits never die. He sees a metal hand waving to him, and figures that if the lions' den is the place he choose to call home he cannot complain.
To his dismay, there is a seat waiting for him. While that doesn't necessarily comfort him, it's motivation enough to take a seat between the iron-handed man and his serious friend. They are already mid-conversation, which laves him in a more delicate situation. In his experiences, it has always been far more draining to listen than to talk.
Though, he supposes in a house of nine others, having to scream to get your voice heard does cause one to develop bad habits.
Once settled down, Scout looks down at the plate in front of him, and recognises the meal immediately as some kind of casserole. He knows that if he treats it as fuel rather than as food, he's more likely to get through it without offending the chef. But there isn't time to be overly-cautious. With a frightening geniality, the iron hand closes around Scout's and gives him a good, firm shake.
"We didn't get a chance to be acquainted b'fore Doc got his hands on ya. Name of Engineer." Scout retracts his hand, dumbfounded, and nods. Then the man gestures besides him, to the taller man. "This here's Soldier."
"Uh," He looks around as if waiting for the right words to appear. "Uh, yeah. M'Scout." Lifting his fork, he gazes vaguely at themes on his plate. Where the conversation had been strained before, Scout finds the silence even less tolerable, and has to ask before he can put the question nicely. "What happened to your hand?"
Where Scout had feared some defensiveness, Engineer laughs very plainly. "This ol' thing?" The metal digits flex. It is almost unnerving. "Well, I fixed it."
What could the man have possibly done to his hand that would call for it to be 'fixed'? In what line of work does a man destroy one of his appendages beyond repair, only to be replaced by cool, lifeless metal? Scout wants to smile at him, and be friendly; he really does, but finds himself with less of a marked desire for food and socialisation.
Sensing Scout's sudden caution, the man leans on the side of safer statements. He finishes a mouthful of food and says, "If you need anythin' fixin', I'm your man."
Scout nods. He pushes around another forkful of food and puts the fork down, sensing the pain curling in the flat palm of his hand. The cut must be deeper than it first appeared. The man across from Engineer has been observing Scout pushing around his food in the way one moves chess pieces in a losing game: with a discernible disinterest.
It takes a second for the man to realise all of Scout's nightmares when the man points his fork at the tags.
"Where'd you serve, son?"
They never heard to which front Seymour got sent. Nor Walt. After landing in Da Nang, it was a blur of letters made intelligible through the censor. Talk about hot weather and jungles and boys with foreign names. And when Walt died and they sent Seymour home, he used to tell Scout about the humidity; of the soldiers passing out in line, and the children running from towns where the Agent Orange had burnt through their clothes and skin.
Ma said that they were heroes. She loved all of those sins, right up until the day Seymour got his blue discharge. It might well have been his ticket to God.
She sent him away, first. All of her boys sat in an office where the doctor talked through Seymour's sickness. Told them all about this fancy parlour trick he had prepared: a transorbital lobotomy.
They put him full of pills and told him if he didn't get better, they'd put a hole in his head, and Seymour would lose everything that made him think. All of that poetry and all of those big words gone.
When he got out, Seymour was sweet on this nurse for a little while. He made a big show of it to Ma, and took her to the beach and everything. When that nurse was asleep in their room, Seymour started writing a little note. He loaded his gun.
It turned out that they never needed a doctor to put a hole in Seymour's head. Not when he was willing to do it himself.
Scout realises that he's gone through it all, again. That he's silent at the table. Unresponsive to the man's question. As if they are somehow tainted, Scout takes off the tags and outs them on the table. He sighs.
"No." He shakes his head. "They was my brother's. I never went –I was jus' a kid an' all."
Soldier smiles. "I bet he gave those commies a screwing they never forgot, hey, son?"
It isn't polite to bring up the dead in conversation. And Scout knows that the man means well, so he nods. He doesn't speak of the snow that fell last winter.
"Him an' Walt both. Made my Ma real proud." He's sung that tune, note for note, so many times to so many people. And today, it doesn't lose an inch of vim or vigour. But always –every time, he makes the concept separate. It's between Walt and Seymour and Ma, and Scout will play no part in it.
For the rest of the meal, Scout pushes the food around his plate and half-listens to Soldier talking, at great length, amount war, and greatness as if they are no more separated than birth and blood. He doesn't take the talk personally at all.
If he's going to be walking with lions, he had sure better start acting like one.
-
For a second, when Scout wakes he thinks he's at home.
No dreams about Seymour. No disturbances. He wakes rested and peaceful, yawning softly, half-expecting one of his brothers to be snoring across from him. Hence, he wakes up smiling, turning over just as a harsh sunrise hisses through the window. A thin strip catches him on the eyelids and shoots his black vision full of gold. For all he knows in these few seconds, he could be free and home.
When his eyes open, he realises it. From the Triple-glazed glass to the furious heat of the New Mexico morning to the man across from him: he is a long way from home.
Crestfallen, Scout pushes himself up to sitting and sighs. He rubs his eyes and walks over to the window in his underwear. The view outside is white-hot. Only vague shapes break the terrible sunlight. He can see other signs of life stirring from across the bridge.
Scout murmurs to himself. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
-
In the day, they fight. Just like he had seen on arrival: the fray is as chaotic and expansive as one could dream. Yet somehow worse.
There is no induction. No explanation, or previous warning. They give him very vague instructions, about the blue building across the courtyard and a suitcase. It's an elaborate equivalent of fetch, and he doesn't mind it a bit.
At least, not until he's given the first gun.
It strikes a very dissonant chord in Mss Pauling's little fingers, her painted nails wrapped around the stock. She handles it with ease.
"You needn't bother to aim with it. The shells have a nice spread." Her voice is always very serious, and very pressing. Each sentence is brief, but penetrating all the same. Scout takes in the weight of the gun. It's very unsettling. The trigger seems so easy to squeeze.
He considers it, for just a second. The consequence of such a simple action. It sits very strangely with him. "I ain't no killer –an' I ain't sure this is right."
She looks at him, very plainly. "I wouldn't call it killing, exactly. They have explained to you about the respawn system here, haven't they?"
Nothing springs to mind. He wonders if it has anything to do with that very surreal experience in the infirmary, with the Medic and his needle and all of that pain in Scout's chest. Otherwise, everything has been relatively standard. And however strange the men around him seem, they don't seem like the type to be killers.
The silence serves as his answer. "Don't worry, Mister Daley, the concept is relatively simple."
That's all she says. All she leaves him with, before directing him to a bright, tiled room full of the rest of them. Armed with a rudimentary form of shotgun, and a snub-nosed lugermorph, he joins the rest of the, feeling suddenly underqualified. He isn't one of them. He does not have enough experience with nefarious activity to feel comfortable.
Out of desire for the known, he sticks to Sniper's elbow, and does the talking.
"I don't get it," He confesses, quietly. "What's the point in all this?"
The man is armed with a very long, scoped rifle. The blade responsible for his hands is sheathed at the man's hip, and he looks relatively –at ease. As if repeating the first part in a very mundane cycle. The man folds his arms as if conversation makes his mood visibly sour.
"You jus' worry about that briefcase." He says, finally. Scout straightens.
"What briefcase?"
Sniper sighs. His voice is very quiet, and his body never loses it's rigidity. It's as if he has trained himself to be alert for something that cannot be seen plainly, or easily recognised. "They got one, an' we got one. All you gotta do is get theirs, an' bring it back."
Scout considers the simplicity of the order. Just like being on the track team again. He knows that's he's fast –no question. But there's one thing still puzzling him. He leans into the man, smelling faint coffee, and heat that Boston doesn't talk of.
"What the hell I need a gun for, then?" He looks up at Sniper, and sees the tiniest crack in the stone wall when one corner of his mouth curls, slightly.
"Let's just say, they don't want you to get it."
-
When he leaps out, onto the platform of RED base, the terror begins.
Mid-morning sun hangs faintly in the east and leaves the whole team blind. Almost immediately, the rattle of guns and the collective chutzpah of footsteps make Scout feel smaller. He looks for someone to follow, out in the open, watching one of the Americans –Soldier, heading out towards the bridge.
He squints, unable to see exactly where the man is heading. He's only there for a second –just a second, and that's all it takes.
Across from him, someone lets an arrow fly, and Scout is thrown back by the force of it The broadhead tears right through the muscle of his upper-arm and feels as if it goes right on through. There isn't much blood –the shaft is buried, largely sealing the wound. His arm is rendered useless immediately. He tries, futilely, to lift it, but the pain tears up through him.
Scout cannot control himself –he screams.
Staggering backwards, and finding wood hitting his back, he lifts the arm with his other, and tries, uselessly, to assess the damage. He's still making these pathetic, pained noises, breathing very hard. There's no use trying to pull the arrow out. It's likely fractures the bone where the broadhead has pierced him, and now some thick, black blood is starting to come in very small rivulets.
Desperate with panic, he tugs on the shaft, hissing in pain. Eventually, the shaft moved further out, but snaps suddenly, and it causes the pain to grow even more intense and furious. His head snaps up, and he squints in the terrible sunlight, trying to identify the guilty party, but gets no chance to.
He doesn't even hear another fly. But it does.
The first thing he feels is a very swift force, like a punch in the throat, and it winds him so violently that he croaks, audibly. His throat begins to burn, as if with some kind of acid, and he gasps out, falling forward onto his knees, supporting himself with one hand and tugging at is collar with the other.
Then, he begins to convulse violently, as he realises that the arrow is buried in his neck. Rather than taking breaths, these horrible gurgling sounds bubble up from his throat. He starts to cough and hack up the blood from the wound, before tearing out the arrow, and halving what would have been left of his suffering anyway. He is conscious for a pyroclasm of blood to begin dribbling down his neck and wetting his shirt.
The blood is going everywhere. His hands are covered in the arterial spray. Scout doesn't want to die. He's not ready.
Is this his punishment? Scout thinks about Ma getting a letter. He thinks about the rest of them: Buddy, Waker, Danny, Frankie, Tony, all lining up behind her promising to look after her. And Scout never got to all of the things he wanted –never saw any of the world, never did anything worth doing –never finished that damn letter he was writing.
He manages to pull himself, sobbing, crying out, towards a pair of feet, and grabs hold of them, uselessly. Blood soaks into the denim he's clinging to and makes it tacky with dirt.
Scout goes to say something –he isn't sure what, but just something to serves as his last damn testament. Looking up, he sees a slice of light blue, and there's the smallest amount of sympathy in Sniper's mouthful of gravel.
"Oh, kid." He says. And that's all he needs to.
It' the last thing Scout perceives –the man crouching, using one hand to hold Scout's chin, staring down at him before his vision judders and everything begins to turn monochrome, to grey, and then at last to black.
Then Scout begins to fall.
He sees nothing, so the sensation is entirely physical. It's cold, and he feels as if he continues to pick up velocity. He cannot be going faster, and yet he feels he's going at lightspeed, and will never stop. As he falls, the darkness becomes lighter and lighter, the grey reversing, his weakness fading. Light appears from somewhere, until, unbelievably, he sees something.
A light. Just a suspicion of a light.
His speed continues to increase, drastically, until he comes afraid, the air on his face bitter and essential as ice. He falls faster and faster and harder and harder until-
Scout feels as if he lands in his shoes with such intention that his ankles practically shatter. He arrives in the land of the living so hard that his senses become overloaded, and stumbles forward, feeling so incredibly nauseous that before he is fully conscious, he vomits, straight and hard and hot onto the tile.
He looks around, dizzily, for someone to explain to him. Scout doesn't understand –he felt it, he died! Was it just a daydream? Or has he been somehow resurrected? Did he ever die to begin with?
After a few moments, a shadow appears behind him, and the smaller of the Americans –of which Scout doesn't number himself –appears. He helps Scout up to standing and smiles at him.
"First time respawning's a real kick from a mule, but it'd be worse without it." Engineer lops his thumbs into his pockets and nods. He gestures towards the door and sighs. "After you, partner."
What can he do? Without a word, Scout goes.
-
Things do not get better from there, but worse.
Scout kills his first man.
It is late afternoon by the time he does. The sunset has gone from terrible to a split yolk, bleeding out low over RED base's shoulder. Scout emerges from the base across the courtyard, momentarily lost, looking round for an exit strategy. He has what they sent him for –the little blue suitcase, belching white paper like slander into the dirt.
The paper trail gives him away. Scout goes to take a strong leap towards the roof of the bridge, and gets both feet off of the ground when something snags him backwards.
No –not something. Someone.
A hand grabs a fistful of collar and heaves him backwards, throwing him against the wall. All of the air goes out of him in a single, nasty cough. Scout scrambles for his feet, desperately. Paper obscures his vision of his assailant, but he continues to struggle, trying to get upwards, and away and out –he doesn't want to die.
A heavy foot plants itself on his back and prevents him from rising. Scout is terrified –he batters his legs and torso wildly, crying out as if expecting help when he knows none will ever come. In the panic, he manages to turn slightly, freeing up one of his arms and tugging the ankle out from under his assailant. The man falls don hard onto Scout's back, and they go for eachother, clawing and punching.
Scout feels the man's nails drag across his closed eye and he kicks hard, projecting the man off of him as he scrambles for the briefcase, more interested in a getaway than a murder. As he comes to standing, he hears an awful crunch and falls down, winded by the side of a bat. His ribs feel as if they have caught alight, and his breaths come in tiny, knifelike pants.
His assailant advances, and Scout has had enough.
He grapples with the man, biting hard at his hands until the bat is freed –rolling away and nearly falling off of the damn ledge. As he reaches out an arm to grab for it, his bicep is crushed hard by the other man's foot. He only has a second to respond, and uses it wisely, aiming his foot neatly between the man's legs and using all the force he can muster. The poor bastard doesn't stand a chance . He staggers back, and Scout' arm is free at last.
The muscle memory comes back to him very quickly: he swings hard and cracks the man jaw in an even swing, a spray of blood exploding from the man's lips. Scout is still terrified. He doesn't want to die again. He just want to get back. In his panic, he continues to swing, hearing the blunt ring of metal of bone, hearing the crack of fractures and feeling the resistance from his target falling away, until there is none. A spray of blood has caught him all up the arms, and on his hands, and hot on his face. It burns.
The man doesn't move, or grunt. It takes Scout a minute to realise it: he's dead.
Worse than that, Scout's chest is heaving. He feels good. This awful side of him has surfaced. Now the bat is starting to feel comfortable in his hands. He doesn't feel afraid, but instead, the rush of endorphins, and pleasure.
Scout has been one of them all along, hasn't he?
He looks once more onto the face of his assailant, a young thing not dissimilar to him, made unrecognisable and horrifying at the hands of Scout's brutality. Oh, God, he thinks, before retching suddenly and heaving thin, green bile onto the dirt.
Horrified, Scout crawls away on his ass backwards, and then starts wiping furiously at his hands. This isn't him –it isn't! He never had it in him before, and he's not like the rest of them, he's moral and good and clean. God, there's so much blood on him, he'll never be clean again-...
He picks himself up, after a while. He's always had to. With trembling hands, he takes the briefcase, and makes like hell for the safety of RED base.
For now, it's all he has.