I won't be around a computer tomorrow morning, so here's the next chapter ahead of time. -- 13. I woke up in the infirmary. The sun was shining through the blinds, the air was warm and the sheets on the bed were cool, and the radio was playing a man singing soft and quiet. I blinked a couple of times and sighed. I closed my eyes, licked my lips, then opened them again. I wasn’t wearing my mask. Holy fuck. I wasn’t in my suit. I wasn’t wearing my mask, and I wasn’t in my suit. Holy mother of fuck, where the fuck was my suit. Why the fuck wasn’t I in my room, why the fuck didn’t I wake up in respawn, what the fuck. I propped myself up on my elbows and groaned. “Anybody gonna tell me what’s going on?†“Ah, you’re awake.†Medic turned off the radio, and I watched him come over and look down at me. I’d never seen him without my mask on and couldn’t stop staring at his face, at the little wrinkles around his eyes and the pale stubble on his cheeks, stuff I hadn’t been able to see through my mask. I swallowed hard and started breathing fast. “And how are you feeling?†This close I could smell his breath, that old-coffee smell everyone gets after their first cup in the morning. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice from shaking. “What am I doing here?†“Recovering, and quite nicely at that.†“From getting shot.†“Well, the bullets didn’t pass through your body, so after I healed you, I had to perform surgery to extract them. And you were still unconscious, so –†“Why didn’t you just shoot me?†He blinked a couple of times. “I am not in the habit of letting people use respawn when there’s no need for me to do so.†“You could’ve just shot me and saved yourself the trouble.†This close I could see his jaw clench. “You were still unconscious, so we left you here to sleep.†“And you didn’t take me to my room because, why?†“We left you in the infirmary because even with the help of the medigun, moving a patient after surgery is far from a good idea.†“So everybody saw.†He didn’t say anything. “So you healed me and opened me up and took off my suit and didn’t even put me in my fucking room when you were done because, why, because it’d be easier for you?†“I did nothing last night that was simply easier. If I had done so, I would have left you to bleed to death.†“So you didn’t do any of it just because you wanted to know what was in my suit.†He didn’t say anything. “Nothing I did was simply because it was convenient.†“Fuck off.†I rolled onto my side. “I’ll leave you for a while.†His boots clicked on the floor, louder than I’d ever heard them, and before he left I called out to him. “Medic?†“Yes?†“You’re a cunt.†“I’m – excuse me?†I shut my eyes. “Go ask Engineer.†The door swung shut behind him and I heard it click, and didn’t move until I couldn’t ignore how thirsty I was. I’d never been in the infirmary before – I’d always just shoot myself if I had to – and didn’t know where anything was, but I’d been in enough doctor’s offices to guess right and check the cabinet over the sink for some cups. When I was done, I put the cup in the sink and stood there for a while and stared out the window until I was ready to get on with things and leave the infirmary. I was in my shirt and pants and had to look for my boots, and my suit was on top of the counter folded all nicely with my mask on top of it. At that point, it didn’t seem worth it to put it on. I just pulled on my boots over my bloody socks, grabbed my shit, and started the walk of shame to my room. I stopped in there long enough to see my flamethrower was lying on the floor and move it to my bed, and grab my axe and shotgun. Everyone but Medic was out in the hallway staring at the little freak. I grinned at them. “HELLO! And how the fuck are you all doing?†“Um,†Demo started. “God, I just hate to bother you, but has anyone seen Medic?†“Well,†Engineer said. “I think he’s –†“Pyro,†Medic sighed, “I thought I had –†I cocked my gun and shot him right in the face. At that range, everyone flinched at the noise, and Medic’s head wasn’t there anymore. I stared at the body, then stepped over it on my way to the respawn room. I could hear everyone following me, and I was so far past giving a shit, they could watch if they fucking wanted. About three minutes later Medic came back, shaking his head. “Pyro, if you please –†I ran at him with my axe. Heavy started yelling in Russian, and everyone else held him back. I got Medic with my shotgun the next two times he came back. Everyone cleared a path when I ran to my room and nobody said anything when I came back with my sledgehammer, which makes for a pretty fucking messy way to go, but since it was right in the respawn room, everything got cleaned up fast. “If you would please –†I didn’t want to hear him apologize, and didn’t give him the chance that time or the next. “Oh, love, beatin’ him t’death with his own leg, that’s just embarassin’,†Sniper said. “Fuck you!†I shouted back. “So, ah,†Engineer cleared his throat, “So how many times…†“Fifteen,†I huffed. “Gimme at least twenty.†Respawn was working fine like it always did, but going through it so many times so close together was starting to take something out of Medic, who was taking his time getting up. “If you would please,†he said again, and he hadn’t said anything the last three times, so I let him talk. “Pyro, if I had known it would have caused –†“Oh, fuck you.†I walked up to him and stared him right in the eyes. “Don’t give me that, you fucking knew, you always knew I didn’t want any of that shit done to me, goddamn it, you fucker, just – fuck you.†He didn’t say anything but I could tell he was about to, so I shot him in the stomach and waited for him to come back. “Pyro, please, I’m trying –†“No, no, no, you don’t get it. This is a fucking shitton of shit, you didn’t have any goddamn right, you just wanted to know, you knew and you just took it, you don’t –†I grabbed Engineer’s pistol and shot Medic in the head, and he went down with a wet gurgle. I handed it back to Engineer and smiled. “Now I’m done.†I stomped back to my room, and this time nobody followed me. I slammed the door and waited. It took a while, long enough to make me wish I had a goddamn book to read, but eventually the doorknob jiggled and someone knocked. “What the fuck do you want?†“Can I come in?†Scout yelled through the door. “Fine.†“You’re not gonna kill me soon as I get inside?†“No.†“You ain’t lyin’?†“No!†“You gonna unlock the door?†As soon as he was inside I closed it behind him and sat back down on the bed. He stood there for a while, looking at everything but me, until he pulled out the chair and turned it around so he could sit and face me. I stared at him until he stopped staring at his hands and looked up at me. “So I wanted to, we wanted to ask,†he looked back down at his hands and shook his head. “Aw, Jesus, this is just too freakin’ weird. It’s just, I mean,†he looked back up at me. “It’s –†“What?†“I don’t know!†He jumped up and started pacing. “It’s like we already knew you, but we didn’t and we knew that and we were fine with that, but we did know you and even if I didn’t know who you were under there like know-know I already did, and now I don’t know you, and, and nobody does, and it didn’t matter before ’cause nobody had any fuckin’ idea what you might be under there but now we do so now we gotta get to know you all over again but I already knew you even if I didn’t, and Christ, Pyro, four years, I know you four fucking years and I never, I, nobody thought what you might be. Jesus, you could’ve been a fuckin’ sack of potatoes for –†“Wait, potatoes? You seriously thought I was some potatoes in a chemsuit?†“Okay, maybe not seriously, but someone, maybe.†He sat back down. “It was at Gorge that pretty much everyone was out drinkin’ some of Demo’s hooch and we were gettin’ really plastered and started guessing what you might be and someone said you could be potatoes and no I don’t remember who but someone did and I said no way you could be because they wouldn’t get picked up in respawn unless all of them got tagged and then I think I passed out.†He hunched his shoulders in. “I don’t remember anythin’ else ’til I woke up in the morning, so I guess that’s what happened. Maybe Heavy took me inside.†I nodded and waited and he didn’t say anything else. “So what the fuck do you want?†Scout jerked his head up, twisted his mouth, and I said it again, “What the fuck do you want?†“What – what, come on, you think I want somethin’?†“I fucking know you do, so what the fuck is it?†“Look, I don’t want anything from you, alright?†“Bullshit. What the fuck –†“Does it even matter if I want somethin’ from you? Does it?†“Yeah, yeah it fucking matters, so what the fuck is it?†I stopped to swallow. “Did anyone asked you, someone fucking asked you to see how I’m doing –†“Nobody asked me to do nothin’, okay? It’s just me here, and I don’t want somethin’ from you, I just wanna see you’re okay, what the fuck does it matter if I do? You think – Jesus, Pyro, you think this fucking matters? Nobody gives a shit that you’re a Jap, nobody gives a –†“Chink,†I spat. “Huh?†He pulled back in the chair and blinked, and I kept glaring. “Chink. If you’re gonna use a slur, you could at least get it right.†Fuck knows I’d heard it enough. He hunched his shoulders in again and went back to staring at the floor. “Sorry.†“You fucking should be.†It took him about a minute to get his voice back. “Yeah, well, nobody gives a shit ’bout that. Nobody gives a shit you’re a girl, either, ’cept maybe you. And we don’t, so you don’t gotta if you don’t wanna.†“And that’s supposed to make me feel better.†“Kinda. Maybe.†“I’m just gonna walk out of here, go sit down and watch TV, nobody’s gonna mind I’m not wrapped up in my uniform, everyone can see me and it doesn’t matter.†“Well sure.†“Fuck you.†“That your answer to everything? Just go fuck it, don’t even care, put on your mask, muhmuhmuh nobody knows who I am so it don’t matter?†“Goddammit, Scout, it fucking matters, this was the one place – the one place I ever had where who I was didn’t matter, you don’t get it, you never had anyone point at you and say look at them, it never mattered what’s on my face, what’s my face, and now I don’t have it here ’cause everyone fucking knows and it doesn’t matter anymore and it’s gone and no, yes, it matters, it mattered. So if you wanna tell me, what the fuck do you want?†“Nothin’. I don’t want nothin’.†He shoved the chair back and didn’t turn around to look at me. “We ship out in three days,†he said, and slammed the door behind him. Nobody else came by. I could hear them walking up and down the hallway and talking to each other, and I started playing with my Zippo to take my mind off it. When my stomach started growling, it wouldn’t be fucking worth it to suit up for a goddamn bowl of soup when everyone knew, so I just put on clean socks, pulled on my boots, and stomped out to get some lunch. Let them fucking stare if they wanted, it didn’t matter anymore. There was no way I’d be able to spend the next three days holed up in my room, not unless I wanted to bore myself out of my fucking skull. The day after a victory, everybody would be hanging around the base, doing laundry or making more arrows or sleeping for sixteen hours, and the only way to avoid all that and my room was to get out of the base for a while. Thank fuck we had back doors and open gates. There wasn’t anywhere to go, but I could still kick out and start walking to get away from everyone else for a while. There wasn’t anything to look at, fields and more fields and bales stacked up together and telephone wires and mountains off on the horizon. I jammed my hands down in my pockets and kept on walking, staring down at my boots kicking up dirt and grass and bits of whatever they grew to make the bales. Someone had ploughed it a while ago and it wasn’t like I knew enough about fields and farms to know more than that, just that it was a while ago because the last time I’d been at Granary it’d been in March a year ago and there’d been tall stuff growing around and now it was July and there wasn’t. I kicked a rock away and kicked another and it cracked in half, just hard dirt stuck together, and I stopped walking to start kicking at the ground and stomping on whatever my boots could find, and I was far enough from the base I could yell as loud as I could and know nobody could hear me. I didn’t want my suit, even with all the dust I’d kicked up I didn’t want my fucking mask, but my thermoses would’ve been pretty goddamn nice to have right then, right about when I stopped thinking of new ways to insult the rest of the team. I stopped and braced my hands on my knees to take some deep breaths. I moved my hands up and down over my arms. I wasn’t nearly as hot as I’d be in my suit right about then, and it was a hell of a lot brighter without my mask – when I looked at the mountains and then looked back I knew I was seeing them better than I could with my mask on no matter how good I cleaned the lenses. I straightened up and rubbed my face and looked around and around at all the nothing until I turned and walked back. If I’d been in a movie, or some crappy TV show, someone would’ve been out waiting for me at the gate, say hi, maybe invite me to eat dinner with everyone and show me things are okay. Maybe if I’d been in a movie someone would’ve followed me out into the fields, come running right after me or walking along to join me when I was kicking up dirt and looking at nothing. But I wasn’t, and nobody had followed me, nobody was waiting for me, and I don’t think anyone knew I’d been gone most of the afternoon. That suited me just fucking fine. I ate dinner like I ate lunch and took my shower late like I always did, locking the door just the same as usual. We never ran out of hot or cold water, some Australian recycling system down in the plumbing made sure we wouldn’t lost any, and so what if we ended up bathing in the same water we pissed in as long as it came out of the showerhead clean. I scrubbed the dirt out of my hair and off my skin and turned the water on cold to get the sunburn to stop itching. It’d been – fuck, it’d been years since I’d been outside wearing something that wasn’t a chemsuit or covered up head to toe. It’d just been for a few hours and as soon as I turned off the cold water it went back to tingling. It was more weird than anything else, and if it got bad and I started peeling I could just send myself through respawn to clear it up. All of my other burns were too old for respawn or the medigun to deal with or fix; they were there when I got scanned, they weren’t injuries anymore, there wasn’t shit anyone could do about them outside of surgery, and I’d had more than enough of that dealing with them when they were new. I turned the water as hot as it’d go to get some steam in the room, and coughed out most of the dust and dirt I’d breathed in earlier. When I went to brush my teeth, the mirrors were still fogged up, and I wiped my hand across one to clear the steam off and look at myself. I used to do this thing where I’d close my left eye and hold my hands up and tilt my head, and I’d pretend my whole face was that clear, and the parts I couldn’t see just weren’t reflected. I couldn’t pretend none of me was burned, but I hadn’t wanted to go the whole way like nothing had ever happened to me, just my face. It stopped working as soon as I put my hands down and opened my eye. I sighed and stuck my tongue out at my reflection the way I’d done when I was sixteen and the scars on my face were still new. They weren’t on my whole face, but covered most of it, up and across from my chin and over my lips and left cheek, all the way up to my ear. The nurses had kept telling me I was lucky I still had so much intact. I hadn’t lost my nose or eyebrows, it’d only gotten some of my scalp, and my ear still looked like an ear, so I guess they were right – I’d seen people that’d melted like goddamn candles, everything pouring down, almost nothing left on the front of their head that said someone was looking at a face, cracks for a nose and slits for eyes. Real slits, not Asian eyelids, fuck you very much. When I was ten I’d met a woman like that who had this whole routine set up to fake a face with a wig and make-up and a fake nose like in those old pirate movies. I’d asked her why she’d bothered and she’d told me that if she didn’t fake her face most people wouldn’t see her as a person. I’d never had that problem. People had always looked at me like I didn’t have a face even before I had scars there. Like I wasn’t from the United States, like my parents weren’t born in America, like my family hadn’t been here since my great-by-however-many-great grandparents got off the boats in the eighteen-forties. It wasn’t everywhere, but it could be anywhere, and just try dealing with the biggest asshole of a twelve-year-old that pulls at the corners of his eyes and starts making sing-song noises because the biggest asshole of a fourteen-year-old big brother told him that’s what Chinese people sound like. Twelve-year-old girls aren’t supposed to punch people when they feel bad, they’re supposed to use their words instead, and nobody’s going to tell them to stop using their words just because they start with the bad ones. That wasn’t even the first time, or one of the worst, just one of the first ones that landed me in deep shit because people were watching. I got into so much shit with my parents, but it was worth it to see him on the ground and bloody because he didn’t think I’d fight back because I was a girl. It always hurt more when people singled me out for being Chinese or having a vagina than for having burn scars. At least I had something to do with my scars. Being Chinese wasn’t something I could help anymore than I could help what I’d been born with between my legs. I’d just come out that way. All my scars were from when I didn’t know better, or if I was too angry to care, or when I wasn’t thinking right, but they were always because of me. I didn’t get any of my scars because someone else dropped a cigarette or crashed a car or threw gas on a bonfire or got lazy when they installed a house’s wiring or any of a million things that lands someone in a burn ward. I hadn’t needed to get in and out of my suit between brushing my teeth and walking back to my room, but I hadn’t brought my pajamas with me, so I still had to put my flamethrower away and change for bed. After I took off my clothes I stopped for a minute and just stood there, and then lay down on top of the covers. The only blankets they had at Granary were these stupid yellow things the color of piss, but I’d slept under worse. Right now I really didn’t give a shit about them, or about much of anything. I just wanted to not go anywhere, and not think about anything, but there wasn’t any way for that to happen tonight. It took me a while to get to where I could get up and get my Zippo out and turn off the lights, and didn’t bother getting dressed – I just sat naked in the dark and watched the flame. When most people saw me, they’d give me shit for anything about me they didn’t like, because the only reason I was around at all was to make them uncomfortable or upset. And if they weren’t giving me shit, they’d be looking around me or past me like I wasn’t fucking standing right there. Everything about me that I didn’t have anything to do with, or everything about me that was because of me, it didn’t fucking matter, because almost nobody who looked at me gave a shit. Most of the ones who did knew what that was like, and they still didn’t talk to me like I was someone who really mattered. Then RED came in and told me I had a chance to ditch all of that. Some place where none of who I was mattered, where it was what I did and what I loved that counted, where I could make my own face and get the people around me to see me the way I wanted them to. It wasn’t just keeping my mask on to make sure nobody knew what was under it – it was getting them to see that what was under it didn’t fucking matter compared to what I was doing. And I fucking got them to. Four years of that, blown to shit. I flicked my lighter on and off, left it on to breathe and turned it off. I held it in my hands and looked around my room, and watched the dark come in.