Chapter Text
1949, Somewhere that was a lot easier to remember a few drinks ago
“Aye! Another drink for my friend here!” Tavish didn’t speak a lick of the local language, but a bar was a bar was a bar, and any patron yelling with the appropriate arm motions was going to get what he wanted.
“I do not need another.”
His friend here was being a right downer though, not at all in the spirit of a bar is a bar is a bar. He’d been putting away his drinks nearly as fast as Tavish, yet the absolute bear of a man was barely tipsy, even in the face of Tavish’s total inebriation. It proved that Tavish still had a lot to learn in the art of getting pished, which he mournfully lamented as he leaned (perhaps over-affectionately) on Mikhail’s arm.
“Needin’ doesn’t factor intae things when someone else is buyin’, boyo,” Tavish helpfully educated him. “Make that two!”
Mikhail was a good man, they’d known each other for a few weeks now after falling in with a mutual employer, and had both been drawn to the city for the same thing: in times of chaos, someone was always fishing at a gun for hire. Well, maybe not gun in Tavish’s case, but he certainly pulled his weight. This city was growing increasingly unwelcome for foreigners, but for as long as tensions held, he could always find the sort of ‘lowlifes’ he figured a mercenary was meant to rub elbows with.
“To a job well done!” Tavish toasted once they had their drinks.
“Job is not done yet,” Mikhail pointed out. Despite his protests, he did take to his drink.
“Ah but we’re going to do it well. That’s a promise.” He slapped his open palm on the counter. “So many blood years of apprenticeship ‘n I’m going tae slaughter this thing, aye? Slaughter it!”
His first solo job, he could hardly believe it. (Well, not exactly solo, there was Mikhail and the rest of the hires,) but his first job as a full Demoman. It was a dream come true! And tomorrow they wake up, march down, set up some bombs and…
Alright, he couldn’t exactly remember what the job was, he was real drunk right about now.
“The important thing is that it’s happening,” Tavish finished with conviction. Mikhail wasn’t bothered by the fact that he hadn’t been privy to the first half of the sentence.
Tavish might have gone on to relay it to him anyway, but he finally caught wind of a voice that had been shouting over the live music for around two minutes now: “DeGroot! DeGroot! Phone!”
“Ah shite,” Tavish muttered, noticing that the bartender was holding his hand over the bar phone’s receiver. “Suppose that can’t be anyone but me…”
Couldn’t have been too terrible, unless his employer had somehow caught wind of him drinking the night before the job, but then they’d be hassling Mikhail too.
“Should just be a min,” Tavish said, rising from his seat. His companion only grunted.
It was many, many minutes. When Tavish sat down again, it felt like it had been days, years since something vile and astringent had eaten into his heart and rooted there, pumping acid into his veins with the sheer unnaturalness of it all. It didn’t feel real. His body, this place he was floating in, it couldn’t be real.
“I have to go home,” he said numbly. It didn’t feel like he was talking to Mikhail really, just that saying the words would make them meaningful somehow.
But Mikhail was listening, for the first time maybe, leaning forward on his chair as he realized tears were streaking down the Demoman’s cheek.
Tavish wanted to turn from him, but he didn’t have the energy. “My Da’s dead. Just happened. He…he was real sick all of a sudden and before anyone knew it he was dead and…” He looked up at Mikail, unable to keep the wash that was pouring from his eye. Mikhail wasn’t that much older than him, but he was taller, and at the moment Tavish just needed someone to look up at and demand answers from. “It can’t happen like that, right? It doesn’t happen that fast. Like when people get sick it takes them days to die and you can go and you can say your goodbyes and…”
The last words were more a muffle of sobs than anything, buried into his arm. There was a warm hand on his back.
“Sometimes not,” Mikhail gravely voice delivered unto him. “Sometimes is very fast.”
“Christ this…this can’t be real,” Tavish muttered. “I just talked to him a month ago we…”
A month ago. Years of love and lessons and Tavish hadn’t called in a month. He should have gone back at some point. If he’d stopped at home, if he’d quit early, if he’d just…
“I wish I could have said goodbye.”
The hand found his shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Go back home. I will explain things.”
“You’ll…” Tavish lifted his head.
“Cover for you,” Mikhail explained. “Be home for this. It will be good to be with family.”
It was the excuse Tavish needed and hadn’t known, the nudge of someone saying it was okay to just drop everything for once.
“Thank you,” he stumbled over his words and his chair as he rose from the bar. “Thank you for this I’ll…” He tried to convey all the gratitude he could into the collapse of his shoulders, but it still felt it would never be enough. “If you ever need anything, you call me, aye? I’m good for it.”
Mikhail nodded. In acceptance or indifference Tavish didn’t know. “It is all fine. Go now. Airport will be open for a little longer.”
Tavish couldn’t waste more on pleasantries, not when his very heart was thumping to be home, home to be with his mother… He squeezed the hand on his shoulder once, and then he was off, darting through crowd like the devil himself was on his heels.
1951, Wallaroo
Mick thought no one would find him up here. Why he thought that was anyone’s guess: there were only so many places to hide on a farm with only two buildings.
“Mick? You up there?” his father called, soft voice already halfway up the ladder.
He could tell the truth: yes he was up here. Yes he was pretending to be very small, like a hopping mouse or a little bat. He could say that he liked the quiet and the hay wasn’t so itchy when you got used to it, and that the smell was a good sort of familiar.
He could lie and say no. That wouldn’t do much good.
Instead he did neither, and his father climbed all the way to the top, Mick with his head in his arms as he listened. He heard the pause when Dad saw him, and then felt the soft squeak as he moved across the loft’s boards and sat at Mick’s side.
“Somethin’ happen at school?” Dad guessed gently.
Mick couldn’t take his head off his knees. He tried to nod best he could without.
“Was it something someone else did?”
Nod nod.
“Kid or grownup?”
“Everyone was calling me names,” Mick manage to squeeze out, the air going through his throat serrated by sharp, choppy bits that just made the words angry.
“Kids’ll say mean things Mick,” Dad said. “They’re just words, you know.”
They weren’t just words. Mick didn’t know exactly how but he knew they were extra bad words and if he repeated them to Dad they might just become true.
There was a lot of wet on his face. “Everyone’s always looking at me all the time.”
Because he was a runt, he was scrawny, and he just wasn’t right like everyone else. They’d just look at him, and see him, and he hated it.
His father hesitated. Gingerly, he reached up and swiped the aviators propped on his forehead, turning them around and setting them on Mick’s face. “There,” he said. “Now they can look all they want, but they won’t see nothing.” There was another pause. “That help?”
They were too big for him, but maybe that was a good thing, more of his face covered meant no one could see how his eyes darted around so much. “Is it that easy?”
“Can be,” Dad shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Everything was an orange tint but, maybe it could work out. Could be that easy. He wiped at his face and leaned into Dad’s side.
1953, Bee Cave
Shot for the door that wasn't quite shut,
But the boy, quick too, slammed fast the door:
The cat, half-through, was cracked like a nut
1955, Boston
Then the boy was suddenly terrified
And he bit his knuckles and cried and cried;
1957, Chaparral
Where it's been for years, and though it died
It's grown in that cupboard and its hot low purr
1959, Early
All those years. All those years of saying he’d never work for BLU and here he was, back in their web. At least when he’d been a kid, he’d just been a bystander for all that nonsense, watching it steal his Daddy back away from him and churn up anyone else that got in its way; but now he was the one wading waste deep in the muck.
“You’re very lucky,” Miss Pauling told him with an amount of genuineness that felt rather inappropriate. “She doesn’t want to meet just anyone in person.”
“Lucky’s certainly a word,” he grunted. “I feel like a better would be-”
Every light in the room switched off. Dell jumped, but just as quickly a small TV flicked to life, bathing everything in a penetrating light. By the time his eyes had adjusted enough that he could lower his hand, an image had appeared on the screen.
In person my ass, but he kept that thought to himself.
“Mr. Conagher,” the woman inside the box said, sharp and purple in more than dress. Something in her voice asserted spikes just as much as her shoulder pads. “I detest small talk, so I’ll get straight to the point. We are looking for a way to re-engineer the RED/BLU conflict and have been lead to believe your skills will be necessary.”
“I’ll also cut the bullshit, ma’am,” he replied. Maybe he was pissed enough to start using some more colorful language, but he was raised too Texan to drop the manners, even for people like BLU. “I’m only here because I was offered a chance to continue my research while I’m under your employ. Were they lyin’ about that?”
She smoked, sucking like she could slurp up the whole world with that cig holder as a straw. “They were not.”
Well, there it was then, no mincing or pretty words about it. That was the sort of opportunity he’d never had while working the oil fields, the hunk of meat stuck in his teeth that he’d been gnawing at for over a decade; a chance to go back to school, to look down all those tantalizing paths he’d given up after Mom’s death. He’d been so interested theoretical physics and then just…reality all at once.
But he wasn’t resigning himself anymore. “Welp,” he hummed. “That sounds pretty cut and dry. I’ll be given the free time I need while I work for you?”
“Plenty,” she waved her hand dismissively. “Attend wherever you wish. Hours, location, it is all flexible, as long as we are clear on this: the Respawn system will be done.” As she said it, she leaned back, sliding into the dark where her overhead lights couldn’t quite reach, eyes orange like the coal at the end of her cigarette.
Dell knew the name. That would be quite the project then. A commitment, years of his life. He knew the sort of pay BLU offered, didn’t have to ask, and if he could keep up his studies then…
“Fine then,” he huffed in the dark with only the screen and Pauling bouncing quietly in excitement for witnesses. “I’m your man.”
1961, Rancherías
There was wind today. Martia liked the wind, liked when it came down from the north areas and shook the agave like they were afraid of something, kicking up dust but not so much that it would get in the eyes. It was nice and sickly-sweet, the sort that made you forget about the sun making your skin itch.
They wandered through the side door near the kitchens. One of the cooks looked up at them, but then returned to the rice that was turning soft in the pot, paying them as much mind as the breeze that had brought them in. Papa’s house had few doors on the outside—things were in the old fashion, and Martia knew their family’s lifestyle was a fading one, that most people worked on the communal farms now, but Papa’s was one ranch that still hadn’t gone. It was all they knew, really, just the breezy home with its glassless windows and arches with no doors. Their bare feet walked them through the courtyard (shoes, Martia, Mama was always telling them, you cannot walk around the house like some sort of mud creature) where their toes spread across the white tile, blue and red designs marking it as the most exquisite room in the house.
It was about time they found the little ones. They stood in the center of the Saltillo and called.
Dinner was ready within the hour, and Martia had managed to wrangle everyone so they wouldn’t get yelled at. Their brother was too small to sit alone, so he sat on Martia’s lap as they broke off the small pieces of carrot for him to bite. Their sisters (they were really Papa’s cousin’s daughters, but so many of the family lived on Papa’s ranch to help him watch the farmhands that it was usually best to call someone by the simplest name you could) were close by and digging into their rice with gusto. Martia leaned over and picked a few grains out of Chofa’s hair.
There were other brothers and sisters too, none as old as Martia still at the children’s table, but the smallest three were their responsibility. All the others would leave every now and again, to go into town, or learn to cook or do numbers from their own mamas and papas, but not Martia. Martia stayed home. Martia minded the children.
Simple work for the a simple mind, Chofa’s mama had said once, which although hadn’t been meant as a cruel thing, Martia still didn’t think it was fair. Minding children was hardly simple: sometimes all three of them wanted to play something different. Sometimes Ramon would wander off and Martia would have to go chase after, and by the time they got back the sisters had gone missing too. Sometimes Jamie would fall and get a big cut in her knee, all gross and gravel covered, and the other two would start crying because the blood was over everywhere. Simple their foot.
As they thought it, they looked to where the adults were eating. Chofa’s mama wasn’t there; she had been sick for a very long time and-
(Maybe everyone thought Martia dumb, but they knew she wouldn’t get better. No one would say it, but Martia knew.)
-and there was an argument between Papa and his brother.
“<They won’t take this lightly,>” their uncle was saying. Martia looked down at their plate and pretended they weren’t listening. “<You’ve insulted them. Can you not be happy with the land we have?>”
“<Every acre we have is one more insurance against bad times.>”
“<You are too prideful,>” Uncle bit. “<It will be the death of us.>”
“<Is it prideful to want our family to flourish?>”
Martia thought that sounded wise. Papa always sounded wise, and they nodded quietly to themself even though they definitely hadn’t been eavesdropping. They knew Papa would keep them safe through bad times.
They told the children this as they Chofa and Jamie into bed, but the girls didn’t find it as moving as Martia did. Instead they just rubbed their eyes, yawned with missing teeth, and said goodnight as Martia and Ramon walked to their own room.
The soft wind rolled the white curtains, in and out, in and out like breathing. Martia watched them as they listened to Ramon fall asleep, in and out, in and out.
In the morning they ate eggs, Martia made sure Jamie ate all of hers, and then it was time for schooling.
Everyone had a bit of chalk in hand, and paper lessons spread out on the floor before them. Everyone Martia’s age was already done with their schooling, had gone on to help with the black books, with working in the fields, or even gotten married and moved off to their new family’s ranch. But Martia was still here. Still taking lessons with the children.
They stared down at the paper before them. Once upon a time, before everyone had decided that Martia was simple—which had come one slowly and then all at once, as though the more people said it the truer it became—Mama had wanted them to help with the books. But try as they might the numbers never made sense to them, and Mama’s infinite patience had worn down little by little until snapping all together. Letters were no better. Here Martia was, with the same sheet as Jamie set in front of them, but trying to copy the sentence onto their chalkboard always came out wrong.
If only they had been good at something else around the ranch, anything to be useful. But no, they weren’t good with the farmhands either, and Papa said they would never manage a thing if they didn’t learn to be firm. They weren’t good at firm. Yelling at people only made them anxious, and no one took them seriously anyway, not when they thought Martia was wrong in the head.
The chalk had somehow become a drawing of a lollipop.
It was a relief when schooling was finally done for the day. For midday was a little snack of warm bread, and after that they could do something fun. Martia brought out the papers and paints, and they laid them on the tile floor, fingers dipped in jars and swirled until the colors were just as beautiful as the ceramic blow them. Paints weren’t cheap, but Martia hardly ever asked for anything, so when they begged Papa with big eyes and a promise it was for schooling, he had allowed them this.
“<You’re so good at this, Martia,>” Jamie said wistfully, tracing the whorls of paint with her eyes.
Martia puffed with pride. It wasn’t good to be bigheaded like that, but they couldn’t help it, not when they knew it was true. Still, it wasn’t polite to brag, so instead they said, “<so are you! I love your unicorn.>” They tapped two fingers against Jamie’s paper.
She smiled, missing teeth wide in her mouth. “<That’s the Mayor! He’s a good friend.>”
The Mayor was round and pink. Martia thought he looked like a balloon. He made them happy, just like the rainbows they drew, like the cool breeze, like the baptism candle they let burn in their room at night. If they had enough paint to last it, they could have kept themself happy to the end of the world.
“<No!>” Chofa yelled, starling Jamie and Martia both. “<I don’t want to do paints anymore!>”
Martia looked up just in time to watch Chofa knock the purple over with one furious kick.
The jar turned over completely, washing a cascade of pigment across the floor, seeping between the beautiful tiles and into the grout between where it would no doubt stain. The wave crashed over Ramon’s paper, and he began to cry as his hand smudges of green and yellow were wiped away.
“<Chofa!>” Martia gasped, springing to their feet.
“<I don’t like paints!>” Chofa repeated. “<They’re boring and I hate them!>”
They rushed over, but it was too late; there was no saving the purple. There was no saving Ramon either, who had been lying on his tummy and now was completely covered, messing himself even further as he wiped at his teary eyes.
“<Chofa you are being very bad!>” they told her, their throat empty of anything else, but that was all they could say.
Someone had once said that because they were no good at yelling that would make them good with children, but Chofa was just like the farmhands, and never listen to them either. Now they would have to ask Papa for more paints, and when he learned what happened he would say no and then he might even take the remaining paints away-
They shook their finger at her. “<You are a bad little girl!>”
“<I don’t care!>” She stamped her foot. “<I want to do something else!>”
The paint was all over and the children were so loud and Jamie had her hands over her ears to block it all out. Why was this Martia’s job? Why couldn’t someone else do it and Martia could be left alone to find something they were good at instead? An angry little viper reared up inside them. They wanted to make Chofa behave, but they cared about the paints more, so instead they went over and scooped up the ones that still had color inside.
“<Where are you going?>” Jamie asked as they wrapped them in their long arms.
“<I am putting them away,>” Martia sniffed. “<Art time is over, until you decide to be good again.>”
Jamie protested, but Maria had a fast walk, and they were out of the courtyard before they would even let themself listen. They knew, knew they were being unfair, that it was only Chofa who was being a bad girl, that Ramon was just sad because his painting got ruined, that all the crying and the kicking was part of being a child. But they didn’t care. They just wanted to be angry, to feed that vicious little serpent inside them that hissed to see all that good paint go to waste.
Normally the paints would be put away in the cupboard near the kitchen, but an overwhelming protectiveness urged them outside, up the hill and across to the house on the overlook. Some of the family lived there, the ones who didn’t sleep in the big house, but the most important part is that in the overlook there were no children allowed.
The wind picked up as they climbed, up the path where crops turned to the hardier grass that could live at the incline. You don’t plant growing things on a slope—they could remember that, from lessons long ago, back when their parents were still trying to teach them. If you planted them at an angle, all the water wouldn’t get to the roots, and would just fall down the hill.
So they climbed, and huffed, letting sweat bunch under their arms as they hauled the paints upwards, taking in the long day through their mouth and not noticing the taste of smoke on the wind.
It was only the noise that made them stop. They froze, poised at singular spot of level ground, straining to hear over the sound of their own breath as they glanced around their father’s land. The light on the agave was very bright, glancing in beautiful turquoise. It was perfectly still, perfectly peaceful, until the sound came again.
They’d never heard gunfire before. They still knew what it was.
Over, on the other side of the outlook, people were running through the lines of plants.
“<The fields!>” one of the farmhands screamed in warning. “<They’re burning the fields!>”
Every one of the jars smashed as Martia dropped them, feet halfway down the hill before the liquid even hit the ground.
A tranquility that had once stretched for years now unraveled in minutes, Martia’s run joined by others as dozens of people began to flee the south fields like fleas abandoning a bathing dog. There was screaming and warnings, telling Martia or whoever to run, run, and now the scent of smoke was too strong to ignore. That once beautiful breeze had turned on them, bringing the fire home.
“<Ramon!>” they screeched as they came flying into the house. “<Jamie! Chofa!>”
Not in the courtyard anymore, just an oozing, ugly bruise of purple that could have occurred only twenty minutes before.
“<Ramon, Ramon! Anyone, where are you?>”
They could see the fire now. Out the window. And logically they knew it could move fast but it still seemed impossible how quickly it had closed, how hungrily it ate every scrap of life before it as it darted across the ranch.
“<Children? Please, if you can hear me->”
They slammed open the door to Jamie’s room. The three of them were there, huddled into a corner, Ramon in the middle and sopping like someone had tried to wipe the paint of with a bucket over his head. Martia didn’t care about any of that.
“<Hurry, hurry!>” They rushed forward, scooping Ramon into their arms. “<They are burning the fields, we have to leave.>”
“<Who’s burning?>” Jamie whimpered. She hadn’t stood when Chofa had, refusing to move from the corner.
“<I do not know,>” Martia said, and it was God’s honest truth. The house creaked around them, groaning where the flames fed. “<It does not matter. Hurry!>”
They fled. Out the back, opposite of the way Martia had come, but the great fire had already begun to devour. The tower, the great one in the center of the big house whose bell chimed every day at noon, gave off a terrifying scream.
Martia didn’t look at it as it crashed behind them. They didn’t look until they saw Jamie was no longer with them.
Chofa hadn’t noticed. She needed three strides for every one of Martia’s, and was running, heaving, and didn’t yet see that her sister wasn’t there. Ramon was too busy crying into the front of their shirt. There was no time to go back. They turned toward the north and ran.
Gunfire was to the east. They could shy from it, but that would turn their path across the field diagonal, putting them in the fire’s wake for much longer…But as they thought it, the rapid pop pop pop echoed from black blots in the distance. Martia grabbed Chofa’s wrist and said, “<this way, this way!>”
The flames roared like towers, like waves, like an entire forest. It was nothing like Martia had seen before, not like the little flame they kept alive at night, not like the ovens that burned at the cook’s careful touch. It was calling for them. It wanted them so badly and they had never been more terrified in their life. It was alive. It wanted them to join it.
Chofa stepped in a rabbit’s burrow. Her leg went with an awful snap.
She howled, and it was somehow a more terrible sound than the fire’s roar, but only just. The smell of burning plant matter left streaks down her cheeks and she yowled, “<Martia! Martia help me!>”
They rushed to her. Some stupid, stupid rabbit and their stupid, stupid hole and there were white bits poking out of Chofa’s skin. Smoke was heaving in all their lungs. Ramon had stopped crying, and could only cough.
“<Martia, I’m scared, I’m scared, it hurts,>” Chofa whimpered. “<Where’s Jamie? Martia please it hurts->”
Martia put one arm around her and pulled. Even as they did, (and Chofa screamed so viciously that it knocked their insides loose) they could tell it wouldn’t work. They couldn’t carry her with only one arm. They would have to put down Ramon down, and Ramon couldn’t run, not with his little baby legs, and already he was barely moving in their arms aside from the feeble coughs.
They shook their head. “<Chofa I->”
As they stood, Chofa’s eyes opened wide in the black air. “<No! Martia carry me, please.>”
“<I’m sorry I can’t->” They shook their head again.
The fire was coming now. It leapt onto Chofa’s sleeve and she screeched, pulling herself across the ground in an attempt to get away from it. Martia stepped back so it wouldn’t catch them too.
“<Where are you going?>” Chofa begged. “<Please, please don’t leave me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll be good okay? I won’t be a bad little girl any more I promise->”
Flames had caught her hair. Martia turned and ran.
“<Please! Martia I’m sorry, please don’t leave->”
They could still hear her dying screams long after the fields disappeared behind them.
They didn’t know how far they ran, or how long they walked when they could no longer run, the extra weight around their chest heaving and debilitating. There were still men with guns, people who had come to hurt Papa, to hurt them all. Were the family all dead? Dead like Jamie and Chofa and the other corpses they’d seen burning while they’d run past? The men with guns had been shooting people who could still scream, and even some of the ones that couldn’t, and Martia knew that if one of them caught up-
A slope appeared before them. It was sudden, unexpected, they had never gone this far from the ranch before after all, so the uncharted landscape snuck on them and they went spinning down the hill. Crunch went everything and they landed at the bottom, terrified, breathing heavy as they stared at the burnt orange sky.
They were dead now, surely. They had broken a leg like Chofa had, as punishment for leaving her, for killing her, and now one of the men would catch up and shoot them.
After a few minutes of lying in frozen panic, they realized they couldn’t hear the guns anymore. They couldn’t hear anything but the slow encroach of night. Crickets. The rustle of grass. The men had chased them into the wilderness and they were alone.
Their legs weren’t broken either. Everything hurt, yes, but they could move, and they clutched Ramon close.
When the sky finally turned black, they noticed he’d stopped coughing.
Slowly, they peeled his frail form away, and looked down at their brother. How long had he been silent? Had Martia killed him, crushed him when they’d gone spinning down the hill? Or had they been holding a corpse for hours, his lungs too small to withstand an entire agave field of smoke?
As they thought it, they coughed sharply. Breathing hurt. When you run you’re used to your lungs throbbing, the shortness of breath, but lying here in the foreign fields it ached just as badly as running had. There was wet along their cheeks.
There were rocks at the bottom of the hill. Martia piled them on top of the body until they couldn’t see him anymore, and made a cross out of sticks and grass. They laid next to him, and hummed feebly. Maybe the smoke would kill them too. They didn’t know. They would see in the morning.