Chapter Text
Despite the parallels to his own situation, Demo didn’t elaborate to the Spy on why exactly he’d done it. It felt personal, private, he wanted hold close to his chest the look in Soldier’s eyes as when he’d crossed that second line. Spy didn’t need to know exactly what sort of man Demo was.
It was those thoughts in his head that kept him wandering into no man’s land again, late at night when he was supposed to be resting up for another tedious day of patrolling RED’s territory. Instead, he found himself roving closer to the imaginary border between RED and BLU, the one that never seemed to move despite the alleged gains each side made in one conflict or another. Occasionally one side would make enough ground to mount a full attack on the enemy’s home base, but even with all their progress the bases themselves were just too defensible, and it always ended in disaster for the attackers. Demo himself had been recruited shortly after one of these massacres, and now having heard the tales of what went down, he dreaded the day RED attempted another one.
He stopped short on the border. He must have subconsciously been drawn to this place, returning to the scene of the crime that hovered on the horizon, but just skirting the edges of BLU territory. He knew he should head back, but something itched at the back of his mind—he searched the skyline, once, twice.
Then he saw him.
Whatever had brought him here drew him forward again, until there was no doubt he was walking toward the man sitting with his back against an overturned car.
The BLU Soldier saw him coming. It was nearly impossible not to, Demo made no move to hide himself as he ambled at a steady pace closer to BLU lands. He could see Soldier tensing his hands around his rocket launcher, and Demo realized he was doing the same, flicking his thumb outwards against his sticky launcher’s trigger. Forcing himself, he managed to get his hands to steady.
“Probably shouldn’t have come back here, mate,” Demo noted as he stepped into speaking range. It felt again like some sort of invisible barrier he had crossed, still on his own side but now dangerously close to the BLU.
“Could say the same about you,” Soldier said. “Take it they didn’t court martial you then?”
“Nope. They didn’t.”
The air between them was static charged, despite the lack of proper electricity for miles. Demo found he didn’t know what to say, how to bring closure to the situation he’d found himself in.
“You’ve been coming out here since then?” he wondered aloud.
The Soldier looked past him, at the building where it’d gone down. Demo saw him absently rub his left hand. “…Yeah.”
“Well. Guess whatever you got I caught too.” With that, to the shock of the Soldier across from him, he sat down on a piece of convex concrete that provided the perfect stool.
“Are we not killing each other then?”
Demo shrugged. “Hey, you’re a BLU on your side of the battlefield. They don’t pay me to go chase you down unless I got a reason to.”
“…That why you didn’t kill me before?”
Grunting, the Demoman massaged his face. “That…I don’t know about that one. I think when I saw you I just…figured you’d had enough, you know?”
“I was ready,” the Soldier stated, and it was so straightforward it twisted something in Demo’s gut. “We’ve all got to die someday, RED.”
“Hey, I know that better than anyone, lad,” Demo scoffed. “Keeping that thought between my ears every day of my damn life. But the way it ends should matter too. I always hoped I’d got out with a kablooie, taking as many two-eyed gits down with me as I could, a good one-liner too if I can mange. I don’t want to die to a backstab, or slip on some rocks and fall down one of these damn trenches.”
“They are a hazard,” Soldier nodded sagely. He gazed again to the building barely visible on the horizon.
“So that’s how you should look at the ending. But the time before the ending…ach well I guess everyone’s always worrying about that part anyway.” Demo rubbed his face again. “Ach, look at me, discussing the meaning of life and crap to the enemy. Sorry sack of shites my team is if I’m seeking you out for company.”
“Ha! You think your team is bad? Our Sniper collects peoples ears.”
“Eugh,” Demo recoiled, making a mental note to avoid the man at all costs. “Can’t compare to the lunatics rooming with us, though. I just found out that our Medic was keeping the BLU Scout open on a slab for days, just running experiments on him. Man’s a nightmare.”
“Scout’s alive?” Soldier perked, and all the warmth went out of the conversation.
Demo had honestly forgotten who he was talking to for a moment there, how that news might hit different in present company. Not to mention the fact that anything behind base doors was classified, yet he’d just offered up the information free of charge. Loose lips sink ships indeed.
But hell, he couldn’t half ass the news now. “Er…no…I’m sorry. He was in a lot of pain and Sp- someone. Put him out of his misery.”
“Oh.” The Soldier visibly deflated. “I understand. I’d hoped…guess it’s just a shame that someone didn’t give him the same chance you gave me.”
“I’m sorry.” Then, because it seemed the right thing to say, Demo asked, “were you two close?”
“With Scout? No, he was a damn hooligan, he just-” Soldier stopped sharply before explaining, “evil has always lurked in the hearts of REDs. It is our god-demanded American duty to stamp out wickedness where it arises unchallenged.” What looked to be the windup to a full-throated patriotic speech died, softly concluding with, “I just think evil might lurk other places too.”
“…Aye. You’re right about that much.” Demo thought for a moment. “Always lurked in RED, huh? Is evil dancing around in my heart too?”
“Of course,” Soldier declared. “That is why we must fight! And that is why we must win!”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, BLU.” Demo uncorked his scrumpy bottle. “Me, I always figure that in professions like ours, there’s no use convincing yourself the other side is any better or worse than the men next to you. They blow up just the same, and when it comes down to it, had the dice been rolled differently you could have wound up on a different side all together. It’s all who’s hiring, who’s paying, and who needs killing.”
Demo thought Soldier might have something contrarian to say to that, but to his surprise the BLU remained silent. When the Demoman finished his swig, he looked over at Soldier to see the man staring at the stars in silent contemplation.
“You are-” the Soldier grunted, “-good to talk to, RED.”
“Tavish,” Demo said. When Soldier just looked at him, he repeated, “name’s Tavish. If you’re going to call me anything.”
“Tavish,” Soldier said, trying out the name on his tongue. It took another moment, but he looked back at the stars. “I will call you that.”
Demo knew he shouldn’t go back. Once was a mistake, twice was foolhardy, and three times was just plain suicide, or so every logical part of his brain told him. Yet, the logical part of his brain was strapped into rocket seat like poor Poopy Joe, completely divorced from the controls as the pull of gravity brought him right back to his doom.
The Demoman’s doom was the spot on the border, far from the electric spotlights that kept areas in the badlands navigable, squashed between two superpowers that were equally as likely to kill him.
Soldier swallowed—Demo could see it as he got closer, the bob of his Adam’s apple. Likely wondering if the RED appearing a second night in a row had crossed the line from happenstance into design.
“Brought beer,” Demo said, dropping the box and shoving it over with his foot. There was a subconscious aversion to the border, as though it might shock him like an electric fence.
Soldier plucked out a bottle. “Red Shed,” he derived the name off the label. “Sounds terrible.”
“It’s ungodly,” Demo agreed. “But it’s cheap and we have it in buckets. I’m not digging into my personal whiskey, I don’t like you that much.”
The BLU laughed. For some reason that caught Demo off guard, like he’d never heard another human being do that before. And, well, maybe that wasn’t too far off, since it’d been an awful long time since he’d been met with a laugh that was actually happy instead of filling the nearest bystander with dread.
“So, what do you think?” Demo pressed as Soldier took his first sip.
“You know,” Soldier said, swirling it. “Tastes a lot like Blu Streak.”
“Which is?”
“Horrendous.”
And if Demo was surprised to hear uncompromised laughter come from someone else, he was even more shocked to feel it reverb from his own chest.
“Ah,” the Demoman grinned. “Just like RED and BLU: same pile of shit, different coat of paint.”
“That goes for the men fighting for them too,” Soldier remarked.
“Ah. So you’re adopting my philosophy then?”
“It makes sense I guess. But I don’t know. Can’t be all right. Things aren’t just a bunch of random dohickies running about smashing into each other. We’re here for a purpose, and that purpose is the kick the crap out of each other.”
“If things had been a bit different, we might have been on the same team,” Demo pointed out.
“If we were on the same team, I’d be dead.” Soldier sipped his beer. “Or worse.”
Demo, who’d had his eye locked on the out of reach mercenary this entire time, found he had to look away. “Ach, don’t say that. Maybe ah…someone else would have found you. Got mixed up instead of me. It’s not like you were far from the border.”
Gravely, Soldier clarified, “if it had been much longer, I would rather have been dead.”
“Oh. I- ah. Oh.” Demo swallowed thickly. Then, because he felt it needed to be asked, he said, “are you doing alright? After...what they did.”
Soldier clenched a fist around his bottle, staring down the neck like it had the secrets to the universe. “You should ask me something different.”
Demo could take the hint. They lapsed into silence, stilted, tense, still not sure what the fuck either of them were doing, how big the hole they were digging themselves into would get.
“I will continue to kill REDs!” Soldier barked suddenly. “If you think after this I will not-”
“I know,” Demo said sadly, wondering if he had traded another year of Soldier’s life for the end of a colleague’s. “I wouldn’t ask you to give up the whole paycheck for one bad day. And killing people for money is what men like us were put on God’s green Earth to do. Well, God’s brown barren wasteland to do.”
“You will not guilt me!” Soldier snapped.
“I wasn’t trying to!” Demo said. “We only leave this blasted war one in one direction. Either RED wins or BLU wins, but either way, that doesn’t happen until the other team is completely off the map. Unless you happen have to have a stipulation in your contract that allows you to get cold feet?”
Soldier’s expression gave him answer enough. The BLU was staring at him like he was seeing him for the first time, as though the inevitability of lonely, grueling warfare had just set in.
The long, melancholy quiet reared its ugly head again, and the two of them split the last of the awful beer in silence.
“They offer you a bonus for winning?” Soldier spoke up when it had almost seemed total.
Demo cracked his neck, sore from leaning against a wall of solid stone for so long. “Aye. Enough to buy a mansion in Granada.”
“Us to.” Soldier was looking up at the stars again. Demo noticed he did it quite a lot; and he probably had the right of it. It was so much better to look up and pretend you were floating away than coming to terms with the desert around you. “I hope one of us lives long enough to get it.”
“Aye, I’ll toast to that.” But Demo realized his bottle wouldn’t make it across the gap to its sibling, and he scooted the last few filthy feet to reach over the border.
This, somehow, felt like the most dangerous thing he’d ever done. The space between him and the BLU narrowed to nothing, the barest inches as Soldier hesitated, then raised his own beer in a clinking of glass. It lacked umph, and their fingers more brushed than collided.
It was the closest Demo had been to the other man since they had met, and he noticed so may things he hadn’t before: the slight underbite, the light skin turning tanner further from the helmet, the gentle scar all the down from his chiseled jaw into his shirt. It all hit him, and he drained the last of the alcohol. He didn’t return to a safe distance.
“Are you sure you don’t want a pillow or something?” Demo asked as he propped himself on an elbow. Having an invisible man skulking around his room in the middle of the night made it difficult to slide off into a dreamless sleep, and it made him twitchy enough that he tried to fill the silence.
“A Pillow? Do think about that for a moment,” Spy replied from somewhere in the dark. “If someone were to enter your room and find a solitary pillow on the floor, what would be their first presumption?”
Demo rolled his eye, despite knowing full well Spy wouldn’t see it. Spy had been commandeering his room on and off for months now, and although he wasn’t gracious about it, it was enough like having a houseguest that Demo had grown some sense of propriety.
“Fine. But one of these times you should take the bed or something.”
“How gentlemanly,” Spy hummed. “But again I must point out, if someone walks in to see you sleeping on the floor next to a perfectly serviceable bed, they will most certainly put two and two together.”
“No one’s going come in here Spy,” Demo huffed. “The door’s locked, Medic never asked for you again, and I got a spare ‘nade launcher tucked under the bed.”
“Concerning.”
“What I’m saying is, nothing’s going to happen to you while I’m here.”
“Again, very chivalrous,” Spy said with the air of a wearing conversation. “But as I have said, I am able to handle myself without your intervention. You would be more a hindrance than an asset.”
“Oh fine!” Demo finally snapped. “Useless bloody Demoman, haven’t heard that one before. You know what, forget it.”
With that, he rolled over to confront the splintering wood of the wall, tired of talking to the void.
Spy wavered, oddly penitent. After a moment, he assured, “I do appreciate your help Demoman. My efforts here would not be progressing nearly as quickly without your assistance.”
“Wouldn’t be helping you if I had a choice,” Demo reminded him with a grumble.
“…Of course.” This second bout of silence stretched longer, and Demo could hear the telltale sign of someone hesitating before a confession. “Demoman, since I am already in your confidence regarding your secret altercation on the border, might I ask: what actually happened?”
“You can ask all you like.”
Demo waited in silence for Spy to take the hint, but when he didn’t relent, Demo sighed, pulling the blanket tight over his shoulders.
“Same as you. Found them...playing with their food."
“Ah,” Spy replied softly. As if that explained everything. Maybe it did.
He didn’t need to know anything more than that. The nightly forays into no man’s land were for Demo’s knowledge alone, him and the BLU Soldier. Just as he’d feared, a bad habit had become a pattern, serendipitous, and comfortable. Most shockingly of all, it revealed how much he had been missing, that somehow in all this he’d forgotten how to just shoot the shit. Talking to Soldier over a carton of beers was so much easier than it should have been, certainly better than the half-scrounged small talk most of RED tended to give him before fleeing his company, and leagues above talking to an ineffable man who was blackmailing him while in his pajamas.
It was an especially distinct comparison when Spy kept flicking his lighter like that. At least, Demo thought it was a lighter, with that soft click click click, but the longer it went on, the more Demo realized it wasn’t quite snappy enough, that the gentle clicking was more like dice being rolled across the table.
“Demoman,” Spy cut in suddenly, and the clicking stopped. “May I show you something?”
Demo hesitated, a certainty that he didn’t want to know bearing down upon his shoulder blades, but with no way to justify his intuition he said, “what, exactly?”
The sound of Italian leather shoes clipped over to the wall, and the single light switch in the room. Demo turned over to see Spy in the processes of manifesting, substantializing himself underneath the blub. He had entered Demo’s room already cloaked, so when Demo let him in he hadn’t known that he bore singe marks on his sleeves.
Or a briefcase in his hand.
“Holy shite,” Demo gaped, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. “Is that the intelligence? That’s- that’s supposed to be down in the vault.” Demo whipped is head around in paranoia, suddenly afraid a BLU would materialize and snap the unprotected intel right up.
“That it is,” Spy said, depositing it on the nightstand and disturbing the empties from their own slumber.
“Why do you have that?” The cogs rotated in the Demoman’s mind. “And how did you get it?”
“Through tremendous effort. Many days of studying the vault, more wasted exploring possibilities of tunneling underneath. In the end, espionage is my profession Demoman, let us leave it at that.” Spy paused, hand resting comfortably on the beveled corner, his black gloves having never lost contact with its blushing surface. Languidly, his thumb caressed over the number dials. “…Would you like to what is inside?”
Demo’s breath caught in his chest. Forget teamkilling this was a crime tantamount to treason. If this intel fell into the enemy’s hands, RED was as good as dead, the whole war up in smoke if a competent Spy got hold of building plans or mercenary profiles. Demo looked down at the shiny little case. There was probably a file on him in there.
His self-preservation still strapped to that rocket ship, he nodded.
Spy scrolled down to the code, then the second release on top. Then the lid popped open, revealing inside…
Nothing.
Sheets and sheets of blank paper, some of which floated out at the briefcase’s opening like they’d been spring-loaded by a jack in the box. Demo leaned over and lifted out a sheet. “Invisible ink?” he asked.
“I have put it through every rigor in my extensive catalogue of techniques, and was able to find no such hidden messages,” Spy refuted. “No, I think it is as it appears: this war is far more than we’ve been lead to believe. Or, more accurately, far less.”
“I…” Demo shifted through the papers, feeling for a secret bottom, anything that would prove something to him.
“I had my misgivings before joining, of course,” Spy continued, watching the display in front of him. “They did not abate when I touched boots down, so to speak. So, I set about to see if I could find my own answers.”
“I don’t get it,” Demo said, shaking his head. “Why go through all the trouble?”
Spy stepped away fluidly, making a move to light a cigarette and then thinking better of it. Instead, he held the unlit smoke between his fingers and gestured dismissively. “Tell me, who is the longest severing mercenary here?”
“Er…Medic I think,” Demo guessed, not sure where this was going. “‘Round about three years he’s said?”
“Three years.” Spy rubbed a thumb against the filter. “Yet, when he first was recruited, he himself was a replacement for the old Medic, and joined a team of which, by virtue of our being here, not a single man has survived to this day. They have each been replaced, one by one, like a willfully homicidal ship of Theseus.”
“…So who’s to say the same won’t happen to us? To all of us?” Demo finished the thought.
“Precisely.” Spy turned on him. “RED does not want us to finish this war, they want just enough people here to keep a stalemate while they continue on with whatever their real goal is. There is no winning against BLU, that carrot of a victory bonus is never coming. We are all going to die out here.”
Demo looked at Spy, then back into the briefcase, futility settling in like a hunk of uncooked lamb in his stomach. Slowly, he began to gather the papers, and tuck them back in their nest.
“I, of course, am attempting to avoid that,” Spy finished, almost falteringly. Demo ceased his shuffling. “I have been able to send a few discreet correspondences outside the badlands, and gotten in contact with various parties that do not mind angering RED and BLU. They paint a pretty picture: transport off the battlefield, new identities when RED eventually comes looking. For a hefty price, of course. In this case, information.”
“Well, they’re going to be right pissed about this then.” Demo indicated the briefcase.
Spy scoffed. “No, not that. What they desire is immensely more valuable than that detritus. And more closely guarded.”
Demo couldn’t imagine something more guarded than a three-foot titanium vault, but he had more pressing concerns. “Spy, why are you showing me all of this?”
Again, Spy faltered. At first, Demo thought he might brush him off yet again, but after a hesitant pause Spy said, “it would be easier on me if I were not alone in this endeavor. When I first asked for your help, it was not only because I thought I had decent enough blackmail to twist your arm: you are hardly the only person on base who falls into that category. Rather, I looked at all my possible options, weighed the pros and cons of every murderer in this building, and decided you were the one with the most integrity.”
“Ph,” Demo huffed out. “Damned by faint praise.”
“Still.” Spy adjusted his tie. “Let me start again. I believe I may need assistance, true assistance, in the near future. An accomplice that I can depend on, instead of one made under duress. If you help me Demoman, I will see to it that you are reserved an additional seat on the flight out of here.”
The swirling whirlpool Demo had been descending into slowed for the first time since Spy had popped that case open. It was just too much to admit that he’d managed to screw himself over, that the endless days of nothing happening weren’t normal, that his gut had been right to begin with. And now Spy was offering him a way out.
It seemed to good to be true. And, in Demo’s experience, things that were too good to be true often were.
For one, he had no way to verify the briefcase Spy had brought him was actually real, he’d never seen it in person before. Additionally, to introduce an absolutist worldview and then present yourself as the only option was a classic manipulation tactic, Demo wasn’t stupid.
“It sounds like I might wind up dead just for hearing you out, whether I help you or not,” Demo accused. “Why tell me? Now that I know, I’m just as dead as you!”
“You were already dead, my friend,” Spy said sadly.
Despite his still mounting doubts, it twisted something in Demo’s chest. ‘My friend’ sounded so damn genuine that it didn’t really matter if it was an act, it still provoked a pang of regret. “Spy I…”
When Demo didn’t finish, Spy clenched his hands. “I understand. It is a lot to digest.” He walked over and snapped the lid of the briefcase shut so powerfully, Demo jumped. “Perhaps sleep on it.”
He didn’t give Demo a chance to respond, flicking off the light switch and, by the faint sound of air warping, cloaking himself again. Demo was once again left staring at the darkness, more uncomfortable than he had been. As he laid down, he thought that if sleep wasn’t coming before, it certainly wouldn’t be now.
“Are you alright?”
The question snapped Demo to a present of intoxication and uncomfortable stone, the Soldier looking at him with concern.
“I’m fine,” Demo said. Then thought for a moment. “Actually, fuck that. Everything’s fucking terrible.”
The pivot startled Soldier, who—if Demo was remembering the past few minutes through his haze correctly—had been talking about a new rocket launcher he’d assembled out of scraps. Not about this whole shitshow. Not about two opposing forces that kept pulling them apart at the seams.
“Bloody pointless is what it is. And not just the regular sort of pointless—I’ve been hauling that for thirty-five years.” Demo took a swig of his scrumpy. “Lord Almighty’s gone downright vindictive against me, I’ll tell you. Wasn’t enough I’m stumbling through life as a bloody monster, a goddamn freak no matter what I do, but even at the micro level it doesn’t matter. Nothing fucking matters.”
A wheeze, too dry to be a sob and too pained to be a gasp, escaped him. He had not come here to break down, had been warding away the panic like a man with a flaming torch as he beat back wolves. But his handle on it all had slipped fully, and he dropped his head into his hands.
And once he did that, it was only a matter of time before the alcohol made him weep offensively, no way of hiding it no matter how far he buried his face. He wept like he hadn’t in years, not since he’d taken steps to break the habit, exhausted from pitying stares for a man alone at the bar.
A night was all it had taken for Demo to concede that Spy was right. This place was as remote as they came, if he made a break for it, he’d just as likely die in the Mojave as here in the warzone. And Spy’s offer…even if freely given, how could he go ahead and take the word of a man called Spy?
There was no way out of this one. He’d gone and gotten himself involved in something way over his head at the promise of a few extra zeros. God he was so stupid-
An arm dropped over his shoulders.
Demo jerked, the unfamiliar yet distantly recognizable touch of another human being shaking him from his stupor. Soldier was next to him. Soldier was next to him on the RED side of the battlefield, patting him uncertainly with his free hand.
“There there, Tavish,” he grumbled, as though the words were just as foreign as the touch was to Demo. “Uh…do not cry?”
Demo blinked away the bubble of tears that had congealed in his eye, slowly recognizing that he had been called by his name. “How did-? Oh. I forgot I told you that.”
Soldier’s neck arched slightly. “That’s how I’ve been thinking of you. Uh, thinking of you as,” he corrected quickly. “Should I not have?”
“No, fuck that, you keep calling Tavish as much as you damn well please.” Tavish wiped at his eye with his sleeve. “I’m so sick of being the Demoman. Before this I just to just got to be DeGroot, a demoman, but once you get out here that’s all they let you bloody be. They take away the little of what’s left of you until all that remains is the stupid class.”
The anger helped a little, stopped the tears from flowing. He could now feel more precisely the weight across his shoulder, the Soldier trying in vain to sooth him.
“Okay Tavish,” Soldier said softly. Then, after a great consideration, he said, “my name is Jane.”
“…That’s an interesting name laddie,” Tavish told him, still out of sorts enough that he didn’t have much more to say.
Soldier had crossed the one barrier they had left, the line in the sand where they passed bottles and swapped stories. There was a BLU in RED’s territory and those pathetic little rules were still pouting and stomping their feet that he should deal with that.
“Shit Jane,” he lamented. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Soldier stiffened beside him. “There is a war on, private.”
“Ha. Sure is.” Tavish swilled. “I don’t want to kill any more of you bastards. I don’t know- I don’t know if I even want to go back to doing normal mercenary work I’m just- I’m just tired. I want to go home.”
“Dear god man, do not say crap like that!” Soldier jostled him. “You just need a furlough. Maybe…RED will let you submit a request, and then when you’re back in your right mind, you’ll be back blowing up maggots to kingdom come!”
The fact that he didn’t even acknowledge he would be one of those maggots sank Tavish’s heart into his stomach. He was arguing this with the wrong person. For all intents and purposes, Jane was Soldier. Trying to imagine a life without war would be like asking a canary not to sing.
Or, Tavish supposed, like asking an eagle not to fly.
“Sure. Maybe.” Tavish knew there would be no solace here. He’d joined this profession of his own free will, let it change him inside and out, and he couldn’t tear the roots out just by wishing. “God help us.”