Chapter Text
January 8th had been all but forgotten since it’d first been brought to the Demoman’s attention, but now it became the single most important date in his life. (Which made him realize he’d forgot his Mum’s birthday this year. Shit, she was going to kill him when he finally got out.)
Despite Jane’s denial, Tavish hadn’t given up on him. In fact, he un-gave up on other things too. He began his regemine again, pacing himself better this time, one day on, one day off, and to his immense relief it was actually starting to work. He could make it across the lookout tower with very little trouble now; it would only be a matter of time before he went back to RED base.
Every time Jane came to check on him, he was heavy with more doubts, ones Tavish knew were natural once you started to question just how damn weird the conflict between RED and BLU was. He’d gone through the same cycle himself, not too long ago. He never was as insistent as he was the first time he’d he begged Jane to run away with him, but that didn’t mean he thought their co conspiracy was a lost cause. He was done with despairing.
Maybe Jane was right, maybe he was preoccupied with a future where he wouldn’t be happy either. But once in his damn life he wanted to try.
“Well,” he said as he looked over no man’s land for the first time in two months. “There it is.”
He couldn’t actually see RED base from here, it was more for the Soldier’s benefit as they were both left to contemplate these final moments together. Jane said nothing though, just stared across the badlands.
“Jane,” Tavish prompted softly.
The Soldier finally turned his eyes on him. “Tavish,” he whispered. “Don’t. Don’t make this the last time I see you.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
Soldier swallowed.
Tavish’s forehead creased, and the smile tweaking his lips was as reassuring as he could make it. “I know lad. I know the world out there hates you—it hates me too for Christ’s sake—but we’re not better off in this place. A damn bloody cage. I know it’s terrifying but…please…”
He reached forward, two fingers on the outside of Jane’s wrist, slowly pulling his arm to him until he could slip the watch in his palm. Jane blinked at his new possession, clicking it open and looking at the paper still folded inside.
“Meet me there, aye?” Tavish asked. “We can be free.”
Jane looked down at the paper. “This is today.”
"Aye."
Jane lowered his head, helmet sliding all the way forward, breathing shaky. “I don't know. But I will...I will meet you there. And then I will. Think about about it.”
The relief was like nothing Tavish had ever felt before, his pinched shoulders slackening as much as they could. "Thank you. Thank you Jane." He reached forward and held his palm against Jane’s cheek. "I better be off, then. We’re not going anywhere unless I get those plans."
And he left, his undecided no-longer-enemy behind him, but hope welling in his heart.
His final mile took more out of him than he wanted to admit. Of course he’d made the same distance walking around ten square feet of room, but the terrain of broken asphalt was more ragged than he remembered, and partway across there was a flicker in the back of his mind that realized fainting out here would be decidedly deadly.
But despite the setbacks, he made it, staggering doggedly into RED’s first floor. The reception was about how he expected.
As he hoped, the feeble remains of RED team soon grew weary of his over-inflated tales of surviving alone in the badlands for two months, foraging for scraps and fighting wolves that grew more numerous with each retelling. Even if Tavish hadn’t been leading off as many boring tangents as possible, it was clear RED was already worn down enough as it was: the survivors numbered Medic, Heavy, and Sniper who all wandered about in a state of fatigue from holding down the fort on their own. Even Medic, with his usual cheerful mania, didn’t seem all that interested in Tavish’s injuries save shooting him a couple minutes under the medibeam. It was as inconspicuous of a re-entry as Tavish could have hoped.
“I suppose we’ll cancel that order for a new Demoman,” Medic remarked conversationally, but it was clear he was distracted. With that he finally withdrew the beam. “Excuse me.”
Tavish, as discreetly as a man of his conspicuousness could, followed him.
There was no way he could steal those plans. Spy had tried and failed, and Tavish maintained no illusions that he could somehow find some secret trick that would make him a better spy than Spy. No. He was going to play to his own strengths, and if there was one thing he still was, it was a bloody good Demoman.
This time, his “distraction” nearly brought down the whole base.
“Sheisse,” Medic swore as a second wave pitched the floor, glass jars of indeterminate fluid landing in a cascade of rainbow glass.
There was no Soldier to declare that they were under attack, but Medic was not such a dense man that he couldn’t ascertain that for himself. Tavish watched him from the glass porthole of the infirmary, the Medic scrabling for his medigun, swinging on his pack as Tavish deployed the last of his three detonations. The south wall would be completely gone by now.
When Medic finally dashed past the side room Tavish had inserted himself in, it was merely a matter of slipping out and pushing through the infirmary doors. Maybe destroying the base was overkill, maybe it wasn’t, but Tavish had never been able to shake the idea that if he’d been a better diversion in the first place, Spy could have made it out of all this alive. This time, there’d be no half-measures.
Despite the multitudes of dangerous toxins and biohazards crammed into shelves in the doctor’s abode, there was only one locked cabinet in the infirmary. Tavish stood in front of it, the sound of recursive explosions banging in the distance, light streaming down from a long-broken window in the ceiling. Spy had probably tried to pick this. It could have taken him ages.
Tavish rolled a few stickies against the door and blew the load.
The cabinet shattered wide, and Tavish wasted no time gathering the papers that fluttered out. He knew he only had a short while before his team realized it was a feint, and even less time after that before Medic rushed back to protect what was most precious to him. So he scooped everything up and ran.
It was pure, unadulterated exhilaration. The idea that he was leaving the base for the last time did not encourage him to look back, instead urging him onward as he burst out the north door and out into freedom. He wouldn’t have to see the aftermath. He wouldn’t be strung up as an example, and they could all kiss his ass.
Adrenaline could only carry him so far. Despite the muscles and nerves the medigun had snapped back into place, the peg-leg was not easy to run in, and he found himself slowing. That was alright. When he finally staggered to a stop to catch his breath, he let loose a laugh so joyous it would have scared wildlife running if there were any left in the wastes.
He made a steady pace to the rendezvous, lighter than he had ever been. The signs of former civilization began to peter out as he wandered further into the areas that RED and BLU had no interest in. It was amazing how one patch of barren landscape could be so worthless compared to the patch of barren landscape right next to it.
Finally, he reached what he was reasonably sure was the northern most part of the battlefield. Here was a different kind of border than he’d grown used to, one that separated tiny toy soldiers from the rest of the world. The walls of the playpen.
Now all he had to do was wait.
Although he had no way to tell time on him any more, he knew he still had an hour or two until 4:45. Plenty of time to rest, to sort through the papers and make sure he had everything.
An hour passed. As the evening grew bolder, something wormed in the back of his mind, one of those feelings you try to ignore because it hasn’t been so long yet, there’s still time you wind up telling yourself. But as Tavish found himself diving into a triple check he had to confront what was plainly obvious to anyone who wasn’t in denial: Jane wasn’t here.
Tavish began watching the horizon he knew contained BLU base, finding harder and harder to keep his eye on the medigun papers. Soon he began ignoring them entirely in favor of scanning the badlands, willing the Soldier into existence.
Another half hour.
He wouldn’t have changed his mind, would he? He had said he would come, Tavish had did everything in his power to explain why he had to leave…
Maybe Tavish hadn’t been as persuasive as he’d thought, and he’d only worn down Jane’s defenses rather than truly convinced him. Maybe now that Tavish wasn’t there to plead his case, Jane had decided the war was more important to him after all.
No, no he needed to make sure. Nothing less than that. He had time.
What he was hoping to find in the throes of no man’s land he wasn’t certain, only that it was the last place he had seen Jane, and he didn’t know where else to go. He wandered, wasting time, the ticking clock in the back of his mind thrumming every instance he rounded a corner and found no sign. It was a slowly mounting terror, yet one entirely different from the dread he felt when he finally heard the gunfire.
His heart pounding, he raced in the direction of the amplifying altercation. There was a sudden lapse where the firing stopped, leaving him barreling recklessly through the wreckage of old streets and long emptied fire hydrants. The silence mislead him. It was barely a minute, but when the distinctive blare of a rocket launcher rattled the surrounding area, he realized he’d overshot. He reoriented himself, and honed in on the new direction.
He crested the top of the hill to see a horrifyingly familiar scene: two REDs, standing over a barely twitching BLU.
Heavy had his boot on Jane’s neck, the Soldier trying vainly to move the massive foot even an inch off his windpipe. His uniform has lost the majority of its pallet, stained red so thickly that it left streaks in the dirt as Jane writhed across it.
Medic looked up just as Tavish reached what qualified for high ground, and grinned wolfishly. “Ah! There he is!”
By some miracle, Heavy’s minigun was not in his hands, but a foot or so away, resting lovingly on a rusted park bench. Tavish could still save this, he still had a shot. He lifted his grenade launcher and pointed it down at his former co-workers. “Weapons on the ground lads! I don’t want to have to do this, but I will.”
“Aha, well I am already unarmed,” Medic chuckled complacently, shifting his medigun easily in his arms. “But selbstverständlich, I am still very shocked to see you, Demoman. I knew Spy was not working alone, but to think it was you? Very clever on his part, such an unforeseeable choice. Someone beneath suspicion entirely.”
Heavy had not released his shotgun, nor removed his foot off the Soldier. Instead, he eyed Tavish in that deeply inscrutable expression, far too well concealed for Tavish to ever know what went on the man’s head.
He couldn’t fire into the knot of people without hitting Jane, and from the bullet holes riddling him, he could tell Jane wouldn’t survive the blowback. He tried again, “I said drop ‘em, unless you want to be a bunch of gibs in the next thirty seconds.”
Medic shrugged, and almost made a move to comply when Heavy said, “wait. Demoman is not firing.”
“That can change,” Tavish said, trying to force his voice not to shake. “Now put the gun down.”
Maybe he had betrayed himself. Maybe Heavy has seen the way his eye flicked to the prone BLU, maybe Tavish had given away something in his voice that showed just how scared he was. Maybe Heavy merely had a hunch.
Either way it ended the same.
Heavy dropped his shotgun off his shoulder, pointing it downward and forcing the tip underneath the Soldier’s helmet. “No,” he said, eyes locked firmly on Tavish’s as he pressed the barrel against Jane’s temple. “Heavy thinks Demoman should put down his gun.”
Tavish froze as Jane ceased struggling, no doubt feeling the hot metal pressing against his skull. Medic’s head whipped between the two of them until it burst into a grin of understanding, saying, “collusion! I see! How utterly fascinating.”
That little rational part of Tavish’s brain realized there was no saving Jane now. It made no difference or not if he complied, they were going to kill Jane no matter what, and Tavish would end up the same if he did what they said. The least terrible of two horrid choices was to fire now, while he still had the option, finish this and still get to keep his miserable life. That’s what his logic told him.
But that part of him couldn’t account for the sight of Jane lying helpless, bleeding out, doing all in his power to shove the giant off him.
Tavish set his grenade launcher on the ground.
“Other one too,” Heavy demanded.
Another hesitation, but then Tavish swung the sticky launcher off his back, setting it next to his other once trusty companion.
“You,” Heavy commanded. “Come here. You have something that belongs to doctor.”
Tavish could do nothing but follow his orders, shambling down the slope as slow as possible with his hands raised. He heard what might have been a don’t escape from Jane, but it was so devoid of air it was hard to tell. Finally he stood in front of the REDs, unarmed and browbeaten, cursing himself for ever thinking he could escape this hell.
Medic snapped the medigun back into his backpack, striding forward until they were face to maniacal face. “Well well well. Now that I recall, it was you who caused such a big fuss the day of the attempted theft, wasn’t it? I should have realized sooner.” He grinned. “I would just like you to know that Spy was in excruciating pain when I did finally kill him.”
Tavish grit his teeth. He knew he was being toyed with but it still worked, and he found he couldn’t look at Medic as his rage boiled.
“And working with BLUs as well.” Medic cast a glance backwards at Soldier, who was once again struggling against his captors, even as every movement grew weaker. “How does that figure in to things? Ah, no matter. I would like my papers back now, bitte.” He reached forward, open handed.
And Tavish didn’t have a choice anymore, not really. Every action of obedience was just a sad attempt to buy Jane a few more seconds, hoping against hope that he could miraculously think of a way out of this situation. But now that grace period had come and gone and he was still just as trapped. He shuffled in the front of his jumpsuit, producing the folder and placing it in Medic’s gloved hand.
“Danke,” Medic says. “I very much wanted to avoid getting blood on these, if I could help it.” Then, with reflexes of lighting, he flicked out his bonesaw and jabbed it into the Demoman’s side.
“No!” Jane wheezed, the constriction around his neck loosened just enough to call out as Tavish collapsed to the ground.
He coughed up a glob of blood, landing in the dirt and convulsing. Medic had gotten him perfectly, right in the exposed area under the arm of his bombsuit, cracking through ribs just as the bonesaw’s namesake would imply. The world began to fade. Fast.
“Doctor does not want more example?” Heavy asked far, far away.
“Nein, I believe we have gotten all of the rats this time. Bring the Soldier though. I am sure we can find some use for him.”
Tavish’s eye cracked open, just enough to see Jane clawing at the ground across from him, as though trying to reach his body. When Tavish didn’t respond, he stopped, the futility causing him to slump back into the earth. Then he stirred again. As he lifted his head, Tavish saw only the briefest glimpse of his eyes, just enough to recognize the look there: that of a man who wouldn’t be taken alive again.
They hadn’t removed the grenades from Jane’s chest sling. The Soldier’s hand grasped one, thumbing the pin and looking up at his captors with such pure hatred it could have melted iron.
“Don’t-” Tavish tried to beg him, but instead of Jane, Medic was the one who heard his pleas.
“Sheisse,” Medic hissed as he followed Tavish’s line of sight.
He rushed forward, kicking the live grenade out of Jane’s hand. Again with those reflexes, he scooped up the grenade and hurled it into the street, where it exploded harmlessly among the already abused asphalt.
“Gah, nevermind,” Medic groaned. “He’s obviously more trouble than he’s worth. Just kill him.”
Heavy shrugged, and with as little fanfare, shot Jane in the head.
The world jolted still as the crack of the shotgun echoed around the world and back again, landing inside Tavish’s skull and bouncing around as Jane’s head rocked back. The suddenness was impossible. It couldn’t have happened like that. It couldn’t.
Tavish tried to shout something, maybe a god no, but it came as a murmur, everything dark along the edges, words already too late.
Jane’s body was still, his helmet now cupping what had once been his head, a mess of gore topping a limp frame. Tavish thought he might be crying, but there was nothing in him anymore, no more pain that he hadn’t already shed.
“I really don’t know what you were thinking.” It took Tavish a moment a moment to realize Medic was addressing him. “Why involve BLUs as well? So unnecessarily complicated.”
“Fuck you,” Tavish hissed. He’d never wanted to kill another person more than he did in that moment, and had never been less able to do it. “You sick bastard. I hope someone takes that bonesaw and shoves it down your throat.”
“One of your BLU friends might try,” Medic mused. “But until then.”
“Eat shit and die,” Tavish mumbled. “War’s all a damn lie. You’re all going to bloody die, you goddamn snakes.”
“On the contrary, mein friend.” Tavish could hear the smile in Medic’s voice. “I think I am going to live forever.”
“We go now doctor?”
“Ja, let’s.”
And then. The strangest thing. The sound of their retreating voices was slowly joined by another sound, one rising in volume by the second. One that made no sense to Tavish’s gradually dying brain, due to the fact it simply couldn’t be happening: the whirr of a minigun spinning up.
“You touch-!” was all Heavy shouted before devolving into a scream of rage and pain.
Tavish forced his eye open, trying and figure out what the fuck was going on, and he cleared it just in time to see Heavy crumple, still wildly firing his shotgun. Medic fumbled out his medigun too late to help Heavy, instead making one last mad attempt for his syringes. He only returned a few shots, but there was no cover for him as the minigun rang, and his succumbed with blistering curses on his lips. Although Tavish could barely lift his head, he did his damndest, searching desperately from where he thought the shots had come from.
And there, as inconceivable as it was, was Jane supporting himself on Heavy’s minigun as it slowly wound down.
“Jane! You-” Tavish looked from the Jane breathing harshly to the Jane corpse less than a few feet away, the one lying still with its head bashed in-
And promptly watched the corpse wink out of existence.
“What,” Tavish breathed. “Why. How.”
“Beats me,” Jane said, pushing himself off the bench and staggering over. He shook as he transferred his weight to his own shaking legs, but made the slow journey to where the other Jane had been a moment before. “As for why, I needed this.” He leaned down, grasping Medic’s shredded carcass where he got a hold of his pack, pushing the torso off it with his foot until the straps snapped.
With that, he walked over to Tavish, pointed the beam on him, and flicked the switch.
Immediately, Tavish felt his faculties begin to return from him, though the absence of pain was still a few minutes away. He shoved himself to a sitting position and looked around, trying to parse what in the world had just happened.
“Jane, how did you bloody do that?” he asked as Jane took a knee next to him.
“I told you maggot, I don’t know!” Jane said. “I was there, then he shot me, and then suddenly I was standing next to everybody and your stupid watch was buzzing like crazy!”
As he said it, Jane pulled out the pocket watch, dangling it from its chain. Tavish cupped it in both hands, bringing it close to his face. “It is an invisi-watch,” he breathed. “One that…saves you from a deathblow?”
“Sure. Something like that. Where’d you get that damn thing anyway?”
Tavish rubbed his thumb over the case. “Was a gift.”
“Hm. Anyway,” Jane grumbled. “I was standing up and they couldn’t see me, so I thought, hey. Might as well.”
Tavish grinned, and the motion felt strained on his tired face, but not unworthy. “You’re a damn hero Jane. A damn bloody hero.”
Jane grinned, slightly savage, slightly exhausted, but all him. He gripped Tavish’s shoulder and the two of them beamed at each other.
“But,” Tavish added, “you’re going to be a dead hero soon though, if you don’t start pointing that thing at yourself.” He gently tapped the medigun with the tips of his fingers.
“You first,” Jane insisted. “You were half-fucking dead, I thought you-” Jane swallowed something. “Just. Take your medicine, private. We have time.”
“Ach, we don’t, remember? I have a flight to catch, and you're coming with.” There was no question in Tavish's mind, not after this.
Jane looked away quietly. “We don’t…have a flight anymore Tavish. Look at the time.”
Tavish glanced down at the watch in his hands, and his heart sunk as he saw it tick 5 o’clock.
“It’s my fault,” Jane admitted. “I needed to think, and I was stalling, just wandering around thinking what it would be like to never see this place again…If I hadn’t been out so late I wouldn’t have gotten caught. Again.”
His hand absently came to rest in the midst of his various wounds. Tavish silently turned the medibeam on him, and watched him sag as the bullet holes closed.
“Hey,” Tavish soothed. “It’s going to be alright. We’re going to be alright.”
It wasn’t and they weren’t, but the words were all Tavish had right now. After what he’d just been through he couldn’t take that next blow just yet, the only thing that mattered was that Jane was still alive, that he was here and not splattered on the unforgiving concrete.
All thanks to this little gadget. Tavish looked down at it, and something stirred in the back of his mind, something about the watch-
“Jane!” Tavish yelped. “We still have time!”
“What?” Jane jolted out of his stupor. “You really think they’ll wait that long?”
“Maybe not, but this thing is has the wrong time,” Tavish exclaimed, scrambling to his feet. “I was messing with it when I tried to figure out what it was for, and I screwed around with the dials. The watch runs fast.”
It took a moment for the information to settle in, but once it did Jane was on his feet as well. “How fast exactly?”
“Don’t know! You willing to go find out with me?”
Jane fixed him with a wide, promising smile, and then they were off, one last mad dash across the landscape.
It shouldn’t have been funny, but they were laughing all the while, racing each other with competing explosions. Tavish couldn’t sticky jump like he used to, but he damn well tried, only stumbling once at the very end as he landed wrong on his new foot. It didn’t matter. Jane scooped him under one arm and helped him limp that last hundred yards to the finish line.
The helicopter was waiting for them. Tavish was glad. It would have tarnished Spy’s memory greatly to find out he’d been stringing Tavish along the whole time.
“We did it,” Tavish whispered as they staggered toward their escape.
“What?” Jane yelled over the roar of the spinning blades.
“I said we did it!”
“WHAT?”
“Ach, forget it.”
The crawled inside, chests heaving as they slumped into the seats provided. The pilot didn’t even speak to them, just extended his hand backward between the leather seats, waiting expectantly.
“Cheery lot you are,” Tavish said, and slapped the manila folder into the man’s hand. “And! I’ll do you one better.”
With a thunk, he dropped the medigun itself on the seat across from him.
The pilot looked over his shoulder, then at the folder in hand. His frown made the barest effort to be a not-frown, and Tavish figured that was all he was going to get. The doors slid closed, and they were off.
It was surreal to watch the battlefield slide away, growing smaller and smaller as it began to look like miniatures of the war it was meant to represent. To think that the past two years of his life had been spent inside only a few square miles of shithole.
He leaned back in his seat. “I can’t believe it’s really over.”
“Yeah,” Jane grunted. “…I don’t even know what I’m going to do now.”
“Is that even a question?” Tavish straightened up. “You’re coming with me, laddie! I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
Jane grinned, and it was a smile that was so sad yet so hopeful Tavish wanted to spend the rest of his life looking at it. “Yeah. That’s fair.”