Chapter Text
“See?” I swept my arm towards the closed door of the resupply. There was a severed arm there in the hall that would not disappear. “I think we are being written off.”
“We need an engineer.”
“He can’t fix this.” I shook my head.
“Well, then what do you think we need?”
I led him back up to my bedroom, stopping him with a look before he could comment. “Grab my bedsheet. Then we’ll go find that engineer.”
“I thought you said—“
“Let’s go!” I took one end, and he took the other, following me down the stairs and towards the spot where our usual Engineer tended to set up camp.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted, before we were in view.
The Engineer was attempting to fix his sentry, one of the pyros standing guard by his dispenser.
“Darn spies an’ your darn disguises...” The Engineer looked between my Sniper and I with a disgruntled expression. “What do you need?”
“We need to be able to speak to everyone. The whole battlefield. Can you do that?”
“Well—Now...” He stopped, pushing his hardhat back and scratching his head. “We haven’t had any commands comin’ through for a good spell, have we?”
The pyro shook his—her?—it’s?—head, then regarded me. “Urr rhh grnrh lrhvh srn?”
“Oh... it’s... you?”
It nodded, with a little affirmative noise.
“We are most definitely going to leave soon.” I assured him. “But we need to be able to stop this.”
“Well, won’t be a thing to rig up a sort of bullhorn, maybe a speaker system right quick, but it’ll be localized, I’m not about to go tromping about all over the goldurn place.”
“No, that would be for the best.” I agreed.
“What’s with the sheet, if you fellas don’t mind me asking?”
“We’ll explain in a moment.” I promised.
“We?” My Sniper elbowed me. “I don’t exactly know, now, do I?”
“In a moment.”
The speakers went up quickly, sentry ignored for the moment, and the Engineer handed me an ersatz microphone.
“Here,” I jerked my head towards the spot where the Engineer’s site overlooked the battleground. “Hang onto the sheet.”
My Sniper did, as I tossed the other end over, where it caught the slight breeze and waved over everything, an enormous white flag. He looked back at the half-finished sentry gun behind us and hit the button on the stolen Cloak and Dagger.
“Pardon...” I tapped the microphone. “Gentlemen! Cease and desist!”
I heard the faint howl of a soldier down below, and the words ‘hippie quitter talk’.
“The respawn has stopped working!”
The gunfire below stopped.
The Engineer, who had just finished repairing his sentry, stopped as well. “What?”
“I repeat; the respawn has stopped working! There has been no word from our respective employers! If they have not decided that this war is over, it is in the best interests of those of us surviving to do so for ourselves. The respawn has stopped working. If you are alive, please meet in the middle of the area for a brief headcount and a summit between the two sides. Do not continue fighting, the respawn has stopped working.”
The four of us shuffled down warily, still carrying the sheet and praying for the best. Slowly but surely, a group amassed.
One BLU medic was already there, though it seemed he had merely been there since the announcement. He was sitting on the ground, staring blankly ahead, leaning against a fallen heavy.
From my own side, aside from myself, the Pyro, the Engineer, and the Medic, we had a Scout, a Soldier, and Stone and the nameless Spy. From the RED side, my own Sniper, a RED Medic—with surviving Heavy—RED Scout, a Demoman. Eight and five.
“Looks like we won.” Soldier said.
“No one is the victor here.” I said bitterly. “Look at us all. Whatever happened, none of us has won.”
“I have a little information.” Spy took a deep breath, a steeling drag on his cigarette. “You gentlemen are perhaps aware of what it is that RED and BLU—rather, Redmond and Blutarch Mann—have wanted to gain control of?”
“Gravel pit.” Soldier offered.
“Beyond that. Something both men were denied, long, long ago. In a twist of fate which might have been amusing, under other circumstances, or with greater distance... I was recently able to discover that our Announcer—the woman who has been giving orders to both sides of this war—has a relationship of sorts with a certain CEO.”
“Redmond Mann?” The Demoman guessed.
“Blutarch Mann?”Soldier was not to be outdone, apparently. He still considered himself the winner in all this, I think, just because there were three more survivors in blue than in red.
“Saxton Hale.” Spy said.
“Australian.” Stone added.
“CEO of Mann Company.” Spy finished. “She has been keeping both Mann men preoccupied with this little war, and Saxton Hale now owns them both. There is no more RED. There is no more BLU. Everything belongs to one man, to one company, in one place. We are no longer necessary. We have been left to kill each other. Forgotten. And the land is worth nothing, he merely owns it because he can.”
“There... there’s no more respawn?” The RED scout looked shaky. “I... I think I’m gonna be sick, man.”
“Go be sick somewhere else, then.” I took a hasty step back from him, just in case.
“I’m serious, here. This is... this is serious. Nobody’s coming back this time, and... and none of the bodies are going away, why aren’t they going away?”
“Stupid boy. You have so much bravado about killing men when it is all just a game with no consequences, and now of course you cannot handle reality.”
“Hey, shut up. You’re the one who came running out here with a giant white flag and yelling at us to stop.”
“Yes. But I am not turning green, like a weak little—“
“Hey, I’m not weak. I’m way more not-weak than you!” More posturing. Yawn... Then again, what else can one expect from these children? “If you were from where I was from—“
“Stupid boy!” I raised my hand to slap him, pulling back only when my Sniper stepped between the scout and myself. I stalked off a few steps.
“Yeah, you better—“
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you might consider shutting your face.” My Sniper warned, voice low.
“But— Hey!—I—Yeah, well, nice job stepping in for your girlfriend.”
“My ‘girlfriend’, as you put it, was about to kick your whiny little ankle-biting arse all across this battlefield, if I hadn’t stepped in. Listen, kiddo... you like movies, right?”
“Yeah, guess so. Everyone does.”
“You seen ‘Casablanca’?”
“Uh, part of it, when it was the Sunday afternoon movie once. It was kind of boring, all everyone did was talk.”
“Yeah.” Soldier nodded. “They had a perfectly good movie for killing Nazis in, and they went and made it about the love between a man and a woman! And that’s just sick. Wait... Well, it’s not sick like the love between a man and anything that’s not a woman, but when I see a movie, I expect there to be Nazi-killing!”
“Do you remember anything about the movie aside from the fact that you didn’t have the attention span to sit down and watch it?”
“No.”
“... Well this has gone off the rails.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“If you were from where I was from,” I addressed the RED Scout, my composure regained. “You would have spent your formative years under a hostile occupying force. I was six years old when I underwent my first mission as a spy. And that innocent six-year-old face would not have spared my life had I been caught.”
“Tsch. Like I ever get caught. I woulda done just fine.”
“Really? You think so? Imagine, you are a small child, and suddenly, the streets outside your home are filled with soldiers. The laws have changed—law being a concept you are barely able to grasp as it is—punishments are suddenly much harsher. You are suddenly much poorer. There is no food. If you are lucky, you live in a town that is not bombed, but probably, you are not lucky. Your parents disappear for days on end and they cannot tell your neighbors why, because anyone could be a collaborationist. There is a curfew. If you are old enough to be in school, during the four years that this lasts, you are practically indoctrinated into a cult of personality. You may be expected to speak a new language, and to learn it quickly. Some of your friends disappear and are never seen again, but you probably do not understand why. This is the sole blessing in your life. One day, your mother does not return.”
His lower lip wobbled. “My ma?”
“That is right. Imagine that, petit. Imagine that she goes out, and she cannot tell you where or why, and she never comes home. Your father as well. Many of the people you have always relied upon.”
“Whatever.” He wrapped his arms around himself and turned away. “You’re making that stuff up.”
“He isn’t.” It was a very quiet whisper, from a very subdued RED Medic. The slightly younger one. Aware that he was being stared at, he coughed and looked at the ground. “I actually narrowly escaped arrest once, myself, twenty five-odd years ago. I wasn’t—I was never a national socialist. My family was always social democrat. Well, it’s different. Oh, none of you understand...”
“You nearly got arrested for being a social democrat?”
“No, for—It isn’t important why. Well, not that it was out of the question, even... No. Forget I even spoke. What are we going to do about... about all them?”
The Soldier looked down at the shovel in his hand, then at the mass of bodies—and of parts—scattered around us. “That’s gonna take forever.”
“Well, start digging, then.” The Medic snapped.
“Too many of ‘em to bury.” The Engineer shook his head.
“Rrh crhhd rlrhs...” The Pyro offered, hefting his flamethrower. “Rf rhh cn’ brhrh rm...”
“NO! Ah, no... you couldn’t—so many—No, it’s better to... The smoke, and—Please, don’t?” Even more than speaking of his youthful close call, this rattled the Medic.
“It’s more practical...”
“Please don’t... I can’t, the smoke... the smell. There are too many of them. I don’t mind digging, I’ll help dig. We’ll bury them.” He picked up a discarded shovel from the remains of a dead Soldier’s hand, the blood on the handle didn’t give him a moment’s pause.
The BLU Medic moved for the first time since I had seen him. He touched his hand to his lips, leaving a smear of blood which he licked away absently, looked around the group assembled as though he was only now seeing us. “The respawn is really... it’s really not going to work, ever again?”
“No. Doesn’t look like it is.” The Engineer said, apologetically.
“I see. Yes, thank you. I see. Ah... he will not be needing this?” He bent, picking up a uniform jacket that had once contained a RED Soldier, and now contained only a few little chunks of him. He stood for a moment, looking down at the corpse he had been leaning against. “Excuse me. I will rejoin you in a moment.”
We watched him walk around a corner, the bloodied jacket twisted in his hands. From off in the distance, there was the sound of gunfire.
“HEY! ARE YOU CRAZY?!” My Sniper shouted, waving the sheet again. “DIDN’T YOU HEAR? RESPAWN’S BEEN SHUT OFF! Aw, dammit, who missed the announcement? Did someone shoot your Medic?”
The Engineer’s mouth tightened. “How many times do I gotta tell... aw, boy...”
“What?”
“Sentry. Only one left standing, he...” He looked around the corner, then came back the few steps to rejoin the rest of us. “He walked right into it. Took one of y’all’s uniforms and just, walked right into it...”
The Heavy frowned, touching his own Medic’s shoulder. “Why would other Doktor do this?”
“... I don’t pretend to know.” He lied, his own gaze on the big, blue-clad corpse his fellow medic had been leant against. “War does funny things to a man. Sometimes things become too much to handle.”
“He was like you.” I offered. Almost everyone looked at me as though I were incredibly stupid for pointing out the obvious, but the Medic merely nodded.
“Yes. Yes, I think so. I’m sorry, are you... the cage?”
“Yes. I am sorry, by the way... for what it’s worth. I wouldn’t have noticed, if I wasn’t... well... I just needed you to be angry enough to attack me.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Well, you did that.”
Several of us got to work digging after that, but it was tiring work, and we still didn’t have enough graves for everyone.
“We’ll have to burn some and bury some.” The Engineer said solemnly. “Otherwise we’ll be out here all day and night, and the buzzards are already coming ‘round.”
“Should... should we sing or something?” The BLU Scout asked, toeing the dirt. “Like you do, at funerals?”
There was a brief and solemn pause before voices lifted in song.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me,” The Engineer surprised us with a rather pleasant baritone.
Which would have been all right, except...
“Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,” The Demoman warbled, scrumpy spilling out as he waved his arms in dubious time to the ‘music’.
“Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive!” Spy lowered Jean into one of the shallow graves we had managed to dig.
“When I was a young man I carried my pack, And I lived the free life of a rover, From the Murrays’ green basin--” Stone barely whispered the tune, but he was near enough to us that I heard him, and from the hand tightening in mine, I could freely assume my Sniper had as well.
“Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, ich fahr dahin mein Strassen, in fremde Land dahin...”
“Uh, fellas?” The Scout cleared his throat. “How about if we all sang the same song?”
There was a brief conference of a few of the singers, and then a few clear, strong voices.
“Amazing grace, oh Danny Boy, in fremde Land dahin, and the band played Waltzing Matilda, Allons enfants de la Patrie,”
“Well...” My Sniper swallowed oddly, his head twitching to the side. “I mean, Amazing Grace is common signature, innit?”
“That doesn’t make it okay.” I shook my head.
“No. No, I’m sort of...” Stone searched for the words.
“Disgusted?” Spy snorted. “Outraged? Offended?”
“Yeah, those, a bit.” He nodded.
After that, the funeral continued in mostly silent solemnity.
The RED Medic had been right. Burning them was a bad idea. We pretended not to notice him vomiting off to the side, and I think most of us envied the Pyro for having a mask to keep the foul, oily smoke out. After that, we covered the rest of the bodies we couldn’t bury with a thin layer of dirt—not enough to do good, but enough to feel as though we’d done a duty—and called it a job done.
My Sniper settled his arm around me and looked at everyone. “So. Who wants to get out of here? Some of us have had a plan going, but... ah... well, actually, a few of those people are...”
“Dead.” The RED Scout hugged himself. “They’re dead. Dead, dead, dead. Man...”
“Most everyone’s been teleported in recently.” Stone said. “You’ve been here from the start, or thereabouts. You got a van?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s two.”
“And twelve of us.” The Engineer scratched his head again. Well, if you can put five in each van, and I take one more in the pickup...”
“Bit cramped. Four and four and four’d be better, if there’s anyone doesn’t mind the bed of your truck.”
“I don’t mind.”The Demoman shook his head.
Soldier nodded. “A real man doesn’t need cushy, girly comforts like a seatbelt. Or a seat. Or a roof. Hell, you sissies in your vans, a real man could walk! But... the back of a truck’ll be fine.”
They regarded each other warily for a moment, and the Demoman extended his bottle. “Friends again? Not much point in fighting now, is there?”
“... Hell. Why not?”
“I will ride in one of the vans.” Spy sniffed, casting a disparaging look on the now-heavily-drinking pair.
“Right.” Our Engineer nodded. “Pyro, how ‘bout you ride up front with me? Now, I guess you boys each take one spy, one scout, then one of you gets the doc and one of you gets—“
“Nyet.” The Heavy shook his head, meaty hand settling once more on his medic’s shoulder. “Doktor stays with me.”
I lifted a questioning eyebrow. The Medic shook his head, slightly bewildered.
“Guess both scouts can ride with us.” My Sniper sighed. “They’ll be in the back, anyway, won’t be too troublesome.”
“Aw, no. I’ll take a scout, you can keep both spies.” Stone whined. Well, I doubt he would have admitted it was a whine, but the emotion behind it was very... very whiney.
“I’m hurt. And after I brought back all the answers.”
“Yeah, great timing with that.”
The Scouts, however, were already deep in conversation with one another, and apparently had fast become friends.
“Looks like you’re stuck with him, mate.” My Sniper chuckled. “Get in the back and keep your bloody cleats off my bed, kiddos.”