1 . Name: Anonymous @ 2011-07-22 19:03

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor

Cautiously rated PG-13 for language even though I'm sure we are all mature men / women / non-binary friends here.

Note: Hey guys. I've been lurking and figured I should give something back, you know, for the karma. I can't write the really filthy stuff half as well as I'd like, so instead? Instead you get a slice of life during wartime. So yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and post this now before I chicken out again.

***

"Well everyone knows it's nurses what does all the work really," said the BLU Scout, giving the Spy his opening.

Finally. Twenty minutes of trading barbs and tall tales about their dubiously-qualified doctor-in-arms had not been for naught. Spy sighed and loosened his blue tie by a fraction, settling against his locker at a slightly more comfortable angle. No matter. Just a little longer, and then he could escape the changing-room stench of unwashed uniforms and Soldier's raging case of trench foot. It was so gauche to drench oneself in excess cologne, but Spy would have to take that plunge if he was to continue hanging about in such indelicate places. And in such company!

"And this is the root of your disdain towards the good doctor? Instinctive feelings on the qualities of our non-existent field nurses, rather than his clear desire to nail your lungs to the wall?"

"Nah, it's just that my ma's a nurse." It was a little difficult to make out the Scout's facial expression, as he was lying on a bench and tossing his baseball up and down in front of his face, but his frown was almost audible. "You won't tell anyone, right? I know we're not really s'posed to talk about family stuff." He twisted to get a better view of the Spy. "You tell 'em and I'll put something gross in your shoes at night. I'll shred all your fruity ties. I'll pee in your fuckin' shampoo, all right?"

It was the most relaxed Spy had ever seen the boy, and still his sneakered feet were incessantly twitching. He was like a hamster. A horrid little wind-up hamster that ran on caffeine, rage, sugar, and the occasional pilfered cigarette. Oh yes, he had noticed the missing cigarettes. But of course.

"If your only crime is to harbor some degree of affection for your family, you make a very poor sort of rebel indeed," replied Spy, his voice level. He let his eyes wander to the boy's open locker. "That is your mother there?"

"Well, yeah." The young man -- almost a boy still, really -- sat up and stuffed his baseball cap onto his head, then took it off again.

"I see a resemblance in the nose, and around the eyes." It was true. "But I do not see the rest of your family. Only that odd bit of string and cloth stuck to your locker." Also true. Also a leading question. He knew perfectly well that it was a -

"Scapular," Scout said shortly. "Yeah, she wants me to wear it an' all." He trailed off.

"This scapular, it is an important item?"

"Yeah, see, it's supposed to keep me outta Hell, but let's face it, Frog Legs, that's the least of our worries these days." Scout began to twist the cap between his hands. "Wearin' it just don't feel right."

"Ah, casual racism. Truly, we are bonding," sighed Spy. "It is, how you say, bittersweet."

"Put a sock in it, assclown. You get what I'm sayin' here. We get up in the morning, we eat something, we go kick the crap outta RED, they kick the crap right back outta us, we respawn, eat something, go to bed, try to sleep -- an' then we do the whole thing over again in the morning. What's the freakin' point?"

"So jaded, for one so young! But with le respawn -- such an advantage for a company man -- surely you do not have to worry about Hell here at all, or about breaking your dear mother's heart."

Scout frowned. He was looking uncharacteristically pensive; it was probably best not to linger too long on this topic. "Well. Yeah. But what I mean is, we killed those guys. They come right back as long as we're close to a spawn point, but we still killed 'em. And I dunno about you, buttface, but when I get shot it feels real as fuck. So, what I'm sayin' here is, between us killin' a whole bunch a guys and us gettin' our own insides spread out all over the fuckin' desert every other day, I dunno if there's much a scapular could do anyway. Not, you know, not for guys like us."

Yes, definitely time to move on. This was practically a Shakespearean soliloquy by Scout's standards, and it betrayed an alarming tendency to think about the bigger picture, however sporadically or profanely.

"Ah, my dear boy," said the Spy, not unkindly. "These are the things we lose sleep on when the war is over. Not when we are under deadline, so to speak. You have only to take care of yourself today."

Scout snorted. "Yeah, great. You know, not that it matters, but I actually get what my ma said about this shit now." He flopped back down on the bench, fidgeting with his baseball again.

"Oh?"

The lights flickered slightly. More energy cutbacks, no doubt. Hopefully the Engineer could keep the BLU base from falling down for one more day. One more week. Perhaps a little longer.

"She said she had enough of war," said Scout. "So she'd rather be a nurse, and patch guys up instead a hackin' 'em up."

Naturally.

"But the doctors get the money and the nurses get the work," Scout continued. "Say, what d'you care, anyway? You pursuing a rewardin' new career in the field of wearin' high heels to work an' stitchin' up the real men? Haw!"

"I do have ze legs for it," allowed Spy.

"Aw, fer Christ -- !"

"It's a joke. One day you, too, shall learn to tell jokes that do not start with ze man from Nantucket. But until then, allow me to demonstrate ze rewards of my own career -- that of a spy -- on yourself." He detached himself from the wall and stalked over to Scout's open locker.

"Don't mess with anything or I beat you like a rug," said Scout automatically.

"I shouldn't dream of it." Spy inhaled deeply through his balaclava and examined the picture of Scout's mother. The picture did not smell of a woman, not anymore. It had been here too long. But that distinctive nose was there, and those eyes. She was winsome enough in two dimensions, but even a fool could see that her features were only truly beautiful in motion. Crow's feet, laugh lines, lipstick. Eyebrows that lifted up her forehead in incredulous delight. This was the face of a woman who had dared to love life, and whom life had loved in return.

A moment passed. On the steam from the showers drifted the gentle strains of the BLU Heavy singing to himself as he scrubbed. It sounded like Wagner, in fact, which explained quite a lot.

"A woman may meet all sorts of men in hospital," Spy said presently. "I do not mean this in disparagement. I only mean that it is a large world, and women of your mother's skill highly prized in it."

Scout snorted. "Yeah, well. My dad was a longshoreman, if you gotta know, but he kicked the bucket. She's been pretty busy workin' since then, if you get my drift. So what are you spyin' at in my locker, anyway?"

"You are not the only child," said Spy slowly. "Your track jacket is too large for you, and yet it has been mended about the armpits and the wrists. It is a handed-down, but cared for."

"Hand-me-down. Yeah, got it in one. What else?"

The Spy let his fingers brush against the photograph, and then the scapular. "She would want you to wear this. Respawn or no respawn. We are the company men, but we do not have to act as though there is nothing to our lives but the company."

"This ain't the confessional and you ain't no priest, so you can ease off already," Scout shot back.

"Quite. Quite. I see a catcher's mitt in here. You know, I do not believe anyone you've ever thrown your ball at on the battlefield has ever tried to throw it back. --Explosive projectiles do not count, by the way."

"Aw, you never know, that old thing's gonna come in handy some time." Scout was jiggling his legs, clearly getting bored. "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time me and Harris broke into the pickle factory?"

"Twice now. A thrilling tale that I am sure is based entirely on cold fact." Spy paused. "You would have done much better in school had you managed to sit still. But I doubt that ze authority figures there were able to adequately motivate you."

Scout snorted. "You might wanna leave the psychology to the sawbones from now on, chief, this is gettin' stale."

"Fine. We shall move on to more . . . risqué subjects. You have not kept your magazines under your mattress since ze Pyro claimed the bunk opposite yours. I suspect these materials are now in your locker instead."

"It is super creepy that you would know that, man. Super creepy." Scout frowned. "But seriously. I don't trust a guy what sleeps in a rubber suit."

"Quite right," said Spy amiably. "One never knows where ze eyes under that gas mask are looking, does one?" He peered into the depths of Scout's locker. "As for me, it is merely my job to notice these details. Ah, yes. There are your magazines. Under the tower of empty soda cans. You really should do something about those, you know."

"Scrap metal comes in useful," said the Scout defensively. "You just keep your slimy hands off my girlie pictures."

"Oh, I'm sure there's nothing objectively wrong in zat pile," said the Spy. "Take it from a Spy, we are all men of the world with our healthy urges. You have but to ask Monsieur le Docteur to confirm this fact, if you are in the mood to be prodded and lectured about it by a sadistic fiend. I shudder to think what his magazines must contain," he added thoughtfully.

"I got a bunch of 'em for the articles," said Scout, sounding even more cagey than usual. "And I was gonna trade some to Heavy for a candy bar. They ain't all mine in there."

If Spy hadn't been interested in the contents of the magazines before, he was now. Purely out of professional curiosity, or so he told himself, he squatted to prod at the pile.

"Hey hey hey!" Scout bounded over in a flash. "Hands off, freak show!"

Spy stood up and backed away to the other side of the locker room, hands up. "Fine. It is really none of my concern. I am merely interested in your continued welfare."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?" the boy demanded, brandishing a fist. "Way I see it, you just wanna getcha spooky fingers in everyone else's dirty laundry - "

"Not Soldier's, he has trench foot."

"Yeah okay, not Soldier's, he has trench foot. But what's it to ya what my ma does for a living? Whadda you care if I got some weird shit in here? What the fuck's in your locker, Frog Legs, huh?"

Spy sighed. "Nothing of interest to the living, I assure you. The important thing is that even in these times of war, amidst the confusion and our paychecks and the many explosions, I have made ze utmost effort to reach out to you and express my concerns. After all -- you are young, I am old, I'm sure all our mothers really would like to hear from us more often, and postage is not so very expensive."

Scout darted towards the BLU Spy's locker. What was that expression? Ah, yes. The jig, it was up.

"You can come to your dear Uncle Spy with questions at any time," Spy said pleasantly, and activated his cloaking device just as the corpse of the real BLU spy tumbled out of his own locker and landed on the slick tiles with a heavy thump.

The last thing the RED Spy heard as he dashed out of the BLU base -- at least, the last thing he heard before the Alarm-O-Tron bells went off in a deafening cacophony -- was the Scout's incoherent shout of rage. Children! What a trial! Well, the important thing was that he'd tried. He had upheld his end of the bargain and looked in on her wayward son. He'd even do his best not to maim the boy too terribly on the fields of war. And once the war was over . . . assuming that an utterly senseless war could ever truly be over . . .

Men such as myself are not cut out to be father figures, he thought, dour-faced, silently picking his way across the dark no-man's-land towards the RED team's base. Love and war make fools of us all. What is to be done?

The endless tactical maneuvers of troops, the cool parry and thrust of espionage, the thrashing of doomed army ants -- in the end, nothing more nor less than grease on the cogs of civilization. Yet there is not a soldier alive who has not let his mind wander in the quiet moments, in the minutes of silence that seem to drag out forever in between the air raids; and after all, why should a Spy be different from any other in this respect? If that night in the RED barracks, one man among nine allowed his thoughts to drift in the direction of stealing a baseball glove, who would hold it against him?

Yes, the evening was a loss. As was the war, probably.

But after that, who knows?