... And then I got a (porn-free) plotbunny. Oops. Well, hello, /fanfic, looks like I got you something. All the bits are short, so several in one go. ~~~1: The Sun Is Burning In The Sky~~~ It's a good job. Sniper's always said as much-- in the past, he's been an assassin and not a mercenary, but it's still a good job. Badwater Basin's not the best place RED's sent him, but it's not the worst, either. He likes it up on the cliffs sometimes, even when he's not working, likes to feel the sun's heat baking into his shoulders and to smell the desert earth. It's a good job, but he's uneasy over it today. Civilians from headquarters have been coming in, fussing with things. Doing the same on BLU's side. It's not that he thinks it's wholly new, but it's the first time they've come in to do their fussing with the teams on-base. It speaks to an urgency he doesn't care for. The war has been a lot of things, but urgent has never really been one of them... He watches the BLU side, watches their civilians scurry about. It's easier than watching the ones inside RED's base, he's at least removed from BLU's activity. For the most part, he doesn't hold a lot of ill-will towards any of them. It's funny, he really doesn't. Gets mad, sure, when he's being sent through respawn by one of them, and he does his fair share of crowing when he's the one to send one of them off, but the feelings never last after-hours. After all, he's a professional. ~~~2: Now The Sun Is In The West~~~ The Spy follows a few of the civilians, as they carry out their business. Their presence makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, their haste, the way they whisper between themselves with clear fright. The whispers yield little. They speak of Operation Payload, and he is not one to be bothered by cryptic speak, but there is so little of it. He hopes their nerves come from their positions in the company. After all, he has no reason to believe that the companies have made their pencil-pusher immortal, as they have their mercenaries. It shouldn't surprise him that they're wary of working around the bomb carts. These particular men may not have been on one of the payload bases before-- or on an active base. He doesn't think that's it. But that is his job, after all, to believe that there is always more beneath the surface. ~~~3: Now The Sun Is Sinking Low~~~ Only when the civilians have cleared the bases are the men within really free to resume their lives. Caution is a must, for all of them. The civilians have been gone an hour, when Medic is sure they won't return for anything, when he's sure his colleagues have also settled back into their own routines. He meets the Heavy by the backway, just to stroll along and talk mostly, but they usually find secluded spots, where hands are held when it starts to get dark. Where kisses are occasionally stolen. From there they wander out to watch the sunset, a sudden whim that falls outside their regularly scheduled sneaking around. Still, a harmless enough activity. If any of the others happened upon them, they could just invite them over, and behave as though it was merely a friendly thing. And it's nice, having the unexpected disturbance over and done with, the evening quiet falling over both bases now. High in the sky there is something, too bright for the evening star, and moving. Heavy leans in, smiling, whispers something into Medic's ear. A small laugh passes between them as their heads stay bent together. Medic tells him not to be silly. Secretly, he wishes to spend the rest of his life with the other man. He doesn't know why he believes it will come true. Too silly, for a man of science to put his faith into falling stars, but he believes anyway. Believes that in the end, the real end, they will go side by side, if not hand in hand.
Blasphemy. Joking aside, why do I think this will not end well for the boys at Badwater?
Hm... could be that the story requires a conflict-based payoff, could be that you somehow know how secretly evil I am, could be a familiarity with the collected works of messrs Simon and Garfunkel... as long as the ending not-well has been telegraphed... Back to writing! The last two little bits of this short, sad, but un-graphic tale. ~~~4: Now The Sun Has Come To Earth~~~ When it comes, it comes faster than Scout could ever outrun. He has time to turn, to start to say 'what's that', and that's all there's time for. Like everyone caught above-ground and too near the bases, he is silhouette and ash, a boy lifting one arm to the sky, forever now a shadow on a red wood wall. The civilians do not plan to return, but if they did, they would see him frozen like that, the ghost of his last moment. The Engineer's silhouette kneels near a dispenser, which still stands, broken. Crouched nearby the shadows of two more men. In the backway, two figures of charred bone, fused together, watch the sky. ~~~5: Now The Sun Has Disappeared~~~ There is a moment, seeming longer than it lasted, just before the end. A moment where the Demoman falls to his knees and stares up at the blinding white, realizes in a flash of sobriety that he's lost the use of his only eye. The only thing he sees, his parents. And as the burning wind washes over everything, he is deliriously happy at the end. The Spy doesn't put things together until after, in the basement of the BLU base, where it is impossible to go until after hours, and even then the men rarely use it. The echo is deafening, something unlike any of the bombs they routinely set to exploding. Even where he is, the sound cripples him. He can hear nothing, can feel something hot and wet seeping into his balaclava. He crawls up the stairs, his legs seem disconnected from his brain. He pulls himself along on his elbows, but he realizes when he reaches the top that there will be no one else. He realizes when he reaches the room with the remains of the others, that he will not survive either. They have all been terminated. RED and BLU have come to an agreement somehow, the mercenaries of both teams so neatly eliminated. He will, at least, leave the prettiest corpse, not like the burnt and twisted mummy-like things which had once been his team, bones and char and their bodies etched into the walls, a grim fresco. It is not much comfort, to know. He wishes, as he pulls himself along the ground, that he had been outside. It would have been fast for him, he would not have carried the burden of knowledge. He wishes he had been across the way, that they all had, or someplace in between. Gone out fighting or gone out making their peace, anything else. Once the cracked earth outside is beneath him, he calls out, but even if there were survivors in the RED base, he would never hear their answering calls. Everything is eerily still, with the rushing fiery winds gone. And it is so late... and he is tired. He rests his head upon the earth, and does not plan to wake.
Damn, RED and BLU are such bastards. I hope Spy and Sniper (I'm assuming Sniper survived too, since you are a huge fan of Sniper/Spy) make them pay.
Heart wrenchingly sad, and yet lovely. I have to agree with >>4 I have hopes that the Spy lives(as well as Sniper, since they are very much my OTP of this fandom).
Ohhhh is Spy going to wake up in Sniper's bed?
Interesting. Foreboding. Heartrending. With a name like 'The Sun is Burning' I was not expecting this. But now I'm hooked and I want to know if that really was the end of it all or if there is going to be some form of Spy -and possibly Sniper?- retribution in the makings... We still don't know who the two bodies by the wall are and there is a teammate unaccounted for... hmmm.
I believe you listened to the song while writing this? very sad and touching, hope to read more
As sad as this is, I can't help but wondering what it would be like if they respawned anyway. The finality of death is peanuts compared to not being able to die (and most TF2 stories don't deal with existential angst at all, and though I don't expect the mercs to do much navel gazing about that it'd certainly make an interesting plot bunny).
I really love this. Atmospheric and moody, dwelling in the feeling of sudden death, and prolonged death when the bomb is dropped. I really dig this, I'd love to see more, but part of me hopes this is either the full end or it will end shortly. Its pretty perfect.
Thanks for the response, you guys! (and yeah, when the song first came up while I was listening to music, the plotbunny bit, and I had it on repeat the entire time I was writing. Then I forgot to take it off repeat and realized while checking my email that I really needed to switch to something a lot more cheerful fast...) I hadn't planned for any kind of uplifting/happy ending to this one, but... darn it, now you guys have given me ideas. Okay, I'm going to have to start the roaring rampage of revenge over in /afanfic... So, if you want a dismal ending with the implied deaths of everyone, let it rest here, and if you want a happy ending with sex and violence, head over there, I guess, because my brain accidentally started writing it, so I'll probably be posting the first bit tonight.
*does dance of joy* Besides my personal preference for happy endings and my personal dislike of deathfics, I also crave originality. There are many fics where the mercenaries are betrayed by their employers or the Administrator, but in all those fics the mindset of the survivors is always "must run away, must not be found or they will kill us, must find a place to live the rest of our life quietly." I don't think I've EVER read a fic where the surviving mercenaries think "you know what? We are the deadliest assassins in the world! We are highly-trained heavily-armed scary badasses who routinely kill other highly-trained heavily-armed scary badasses! We should not be afraid of RED and BLU and the Administrator, THEY should be afraid of US!" So, yeah, I'm very much looking forward to the roaring rampage of revenge :)