Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts when, in a valiant attempt to defend a captured point during the final round of the match, Heavy smashes Engineer's guitar to smithereens. Sniper doesn't see it happen in the moment. He's preoccupied with wrestling the enemy Spy to the floor of his nest. The frog woulda gotten an easy backstab in, had the floor in front of the doorway not been densely littered with jars of piss (it's been a long day and the coffee and Jarate pills are doing a damn good job). But he takes a step half an inch too far to the right and one jar clinks into the next just loud enough for Sniper to look up from his rifle and in a single smooth motion unsheathe his kukri, turn, and leap.

The struggle ends with the Spy sporting a nice gash in his throat, and he manages only a few indignant wheezes before he expires and his body vanishes. Sniper wipes the blood from the kukri and re-sheathes it, satisfied that the Spy won't be trying that sort of thing again soon. He returns to his rifle and peers down the scope. That's when he spots the aftermath, a smear of blood and a comical pile of ash, and he wonders what has happened.

Engineer rushes back to the site of the incident, respawned and intact, and halts to kneel over the pile of ash, which has some metal bits sticking out. He takes one of the bits of metal, a peg or something, and holds it gently between gloved thumb and forefinger, like a tooth or a bone fragment plucked from a cremated corpse. Sniper can’t tell what it is, but even then, he suspects it’s the guitar. Any other piece of his equipment would have gone through just fine, but this was an anomaly. Not programmed in right, or something, Sniper thinks. Can't respawn like the rest. 

If Engineer cries, his goggles contain the tears.

"Sorry, mate," Sniper mutters, and means it.

Engie is good at keeping his head on his shoulders when things get tough. Sniper likes that about him. More than makes up for what Sniper privately refers to as the berko shit. Get him in the right place and he can go toe to toe with Medic for going absolutely manic, single-minded in their pursuits, the world a field of nails and them wielding the hammer of God. Better covered in motor oil than blood, but still, it sends a shudder down the spine.

This despite the fact that, at least on good days with high visibility and no strong crosswind, Sniper feels himself to be in a similar league. It's not what he’d call mania, but getting in shot after shot, kill after kill, is deeply satisfying in a way he cannot begin to express without sounding loony. Like the world is his dartboard, maybe. Regardless, hard not to think that way when you find yourself peering through a scope, nesting, waiting like a hawk. Does something to your brain.

It takes a while, and in the meantime Sniper gets to shoot three more people in the head, but the opposition seizes point after point, the round ends, and the match concludes with a resounding loss for his team. They retreat morosely to the locker room and showers, even if they’ve recently respawned and are comparatively clean. In the locker room, they grumble and commiserate. Medic looks at a bruise on Scout’s rib cage and pokes at it with no bedside manner whatsoever to determine whether or not anything is broken. Scout whines. Ain’t he supposed to be tough? Medic certainly doesn’t care to stroke the guy’s ego, just mutters to himself in German before announcing “It appears that both your side and your pride are bruised, jugend,” with a smile like a knife. Sniper grimaces and leaves them alone.

In a quiet corner, away from the rabble but close to Sniper’s own locker, Sniper notices Heavy slumped over on a bench, and then Engineer sitting next to him. It's like watching a hedgehog engaging a bear in conversation. Engie has taken his goggles and hard hat off and he looks a little softer, maybe even naked, like he’s taken off a suit of armor. Heavy has not undressed. He holds Sasha the minigun like a lapdog and strokes it gently as the conversation unfolds. Sniper tries to be discreet as he rummages through his belongings, though nothing should be treated as private in a locker room. It’s benign, anyway: Engie takes the trouble to assure the distressed Heavy with shoulder pats and dulcet words that there are no hard feelings over (and this is where Sniper hears it confirmed) the destroyed guitar. Heavy was just doing his job, says Engie. Heavy seems to appreciate it, and his angular face softens with a sad smile.

Sniper is fond of Heavy in his own way. He is a man of great sensitivity and the breadth and depth of his relationship with inanimate objects is unparalleled. Never mind his loving relationship with Sasha the minigun; he feels for a mere rock what other men struggle to feel for a fellow human being. Sniper is quite fond of his rifle but can never reach the heights of ecstasy that Heavy does just by firing Sasha. It's a right beautiful sight. He may even be a mite bit envious. He wonders if it has something to do with being Russian specifically. If nationality truly has any bearing on character at all. He knows place does. The bush shaped him well. But he might be an outlier.

The ceasefires are put in place for another few days. The evening wears on. Soldier is cooking, and nobody likes it, but they're all gonna eat it, even if Scout whines, Spy grumbles, Demoman puts conspicuous amounts of pepper on it, and Medic looks less like he's cutting up food and more like he's performing routine surgery (not even surprise experimental surgery). It's a sorry sight to cap off a sorry day. In lieu of the food being any good, to lighten the mood, Engie takes the opportunity to recall how he got crushed.

The way he tells it, it was an accident, his fault for bringing the dang thing along, and really it could have been anyone of sufficient hugeness who'd tripped, fallen backwards, tackled Engineer blindly, not only crushed the poor little man but reduced the guitar to splinters, and then for good measure immediately gotten themselves torched by the enemy Pyro. Truly overkill, but worse has been recorded in the annals of the Gravel Wars, everyone agrees. It does the trick. On top of however much knowledge a man needs to acquire eleven PhDs in the hard sciences, Engineer knows how to spin a yarn. Heavy corroborates crucial details with dry humor: "Is true. Tripped over rail and crushed little Engineer and guitar like pinecone beneath foot. Am sorry it happened, but more sorry guitar cannot respawn."

Sniper turns to hide a smile. It is good to know they think alike.

Dinner winds down and the conversation drifts up and away into nothing like so much smoke from a dying fire. Sniper is about to push in his chair and head back to the camper van for some much-needed sleep when Engineer leans over and says, "Say, stretch, I've been thinkin'."

Sniper’s a little annoyed but tries not to show it. He likes Engineer and doesn’t want to seem cross for no reason. “What about?”

It’s about the guitar, or replacing it. It was a sentimental thing, Engineer explains. “Really ain’t no reason I couldn’t build another, but I got so many projects running already and don’t wanna set to woodworking on top of everything else.”

“So you’re buying one,” Sniper guesses.

“Custom-ordering,” Engineer clarifies. “Luthier in town, actually. Gonna phone it in tomorrow. He's a real hush-hush guy, considering... well, the business." Sniper figures he means the business of a mercenary, an undesirable, performing a transaction with a local. "He won’t even take a check. But it’ll take at least a month to make, I know that much.”

Sniper’s waiting for how this is relevant to him, though he thinks he already knows the angle.

“Now I know you hate surprises,” Engineer says, holding his hands up apologetically. “But since it’s a month, maybe more, in advance, and you have… let’s call it the luxury of a private vehicle…” 

Sniper cuts in. “You want me to get it for ya?”

“You’d be doing me a favor.”

Sniper does not think of himself as a kind man but Engineer has got a way with people that he not only envies, but finds himself susceptible to. Hard to refuse such a smoothly put request from such a well-mannered Texan. And really, barring a contract, what else does he have to do other than the matches? Driving out to the middle of the desert and staring at rocks and snakes and clouds?

So the decision is easily made. “Yeah, I gotcha, mate.”

***

Five weeks later, on what would usually be a quiet day off, Sniper finds himself driving into Teufort at seven in the morning. He carries with him a small cash-filled envelope and an address scrawled on the back. He has had two cups of coffee already and he wishes he had a third to nurse.

Circumstances have conspired against him. Despite his agreement, the weeks have worn on him in such a way that his capacity for performing tasks outside of his work routine (which is to say, shooting and stabbing people dead and occasionally throwing a jar of piss at them to keep ‘em humble) is almost completely diminished. He made himself do it, though. Made himself shower in the base locker rooms, made himself put on a shirt that wasn’t team colors (green collared shirt rolled up to the elbows). No hat, but he’s keeping the shades on today. The light offends him, however soft. He'd rather be in the back of the camper van staring at his collection of dirty pictures on the wall. It’s not quite despair, more like he has run himself ragged. Still, he keeps his word.

The mood persists in spite of the badlands. Gorgeous desert, like a cake cut into pieces and left out just for him. Hoodoos reaching up to wide open skies like hands, frozen waves of stratified rock, arches just sitting there, sculptures of forces that although they are normal, only the wind and rain and time, seem too big to comprehend. The mesas and buttes in the distance, jutting out. The clarity of the moon, huge as it rises and sets. Orange, dusty. Deceptively dry. It is not without life. Desert Marigold, prickly pears. Agave here and there. Sometimes, purple flowers he does not know the name of, sprouting after it rains. He has seen herds of wild white horses dancing along the road like spirits. It’s the kind of country most would dismiss as imaginary.

No. Now that he thinks about it, he is glad to be here, despite it all. Dreaming away in the cool desert morning with the sky only just beginning to brighten.

He sees her first as a silhouette on the roadside, just another person lost in the badlands. His days in the bush, never mind his general temperament, taught him to be wary, so he's not entirely thrilled when he recognizes the universal sign of hitchhiking, and then realizes that she is a girl. A skinny girl with a short copper bob in jeans and a dark leather jacket that looks too big for her, a rucksack on her shoulder and a suitcase at her feet. She is dressed for protection, not for fun, a contrast to the hippies that occasionally skulk around.

In a move that he will regret for the rest of his life, he pulls over.

"G'day," he calls out.

"Nice van," she says back, shielding her eyes from the rising sun.

He has to scoot to the passenger side to lean out of the window and talk to her. "You're taking a real risk out here, sheila," Sniper says, not shouting this time.

The girl scoffs. No, she’s a woman, because despite her short stature and the scattering of freckles on tan skin, there is a hardness to her eyes that he can see even in the soft dawns. "Please. You wouldn't believe the last guy I hitched a ride with."

Sniper is intrigued, leans further out the window. "Try me."

"He tried to cop a feel, so I slapped him. Then he tried worse, so I punched him in the face and nearly killed us both." She smiles like she's trying to make light of it but there's a quiver in her voice. "He pulled over like he was gonna do something even worse than that. I punched his lights out and left him there. Then I grabbed my stuff, rambled down the road for a minute, and well, here I am." An open-armed, what-can-you-do shrug.

"Yech. That early in the morning?" He considers himself difficult to surprise, let alone disgust, but can't help but wince on her behalf. "You'll get none of that from me," he says, in a way he hopes is reassuring. He won't ask if the other driver is okay—world’s better off if he karked it, probably—won't ask her for proof, and certainly won't refuse her a ride. Sniper knows how men are, being one himself, and likes to think he's got a bird's-eye view on the myriad ways men can ruin things for everyone. He also likes to think he is different. "Where you headed?"

"Teufort way, I guess. Anywhere there's a place to stay."

"Your lucky day. I'm going there meself." Sniper realizes he's being rude and offers a hand through the window. "Mick."

She seems to be gauging him for a second—not unwarranted, given what she says she's just escaped—but nevertheless takes his hand firmly and shakes it. "Luz."

Sniper opens the door and scoots back to the driver's side; Luz throws in her suitcase so it separates them and climbs in after, stashing her rucksack on the other side. She shuts the door and they take off, leaving behind a cloud of dust; the camper van rolls along the winding roads, civilization-bound.

It doesn’t take long for Sniper’s curiosity to get the best of him. "You usually clobber men who treat you like a piece of meat?"

"Don't usually get that kind of treatment," says Luz. She's not so cocky about it now. Sounds tired. Her voice lowers. How old is she? Can’t be more than thirty. Her freckles make her look younger. She digs through her backpack and draws out a stubby pencil, a notebook, and what looks like a lump of rubber.

"You did a good thing. Crook world out there. No shame in showing a man what for." Especially if the man in question is a randy fuckhead.

Luz writes. No, she’s drawing. The road’s not smooth, he thinks. How will that affect it? She says: "I hope so. My hand hurts. I might have sprained something."

He glances at her hands and spots a bruise on her knuckles, maybe a bit of blood. "Worth a hurt hand."

A little silence. Sniper realizes that he can smell her. She does not stink, but the smell isn’t what he’d call girly, either. She smells first and foremost like a body, with an undertone that Sniper can’t identify but still finds… there is no other way to put it. He thinks she smells delicious. The fact makes him uneasy. Then Luz puts away her pencil and pad and says: "You're Australian." In a tone that betrays the question, unaskable: why are you, an Australian, in New Mexico?

"You're wearing a black leather jacket in the middle of the badlands." What is it, Stating the Obvious Power Hour?

She plays with the lump of rubber and gets a little defensive. "It was cold last night and it's the warmest thing I’ve got."

"Makes sense." He lets it sit, then rerails the conversation. "I'm Australian because my parents are, and I came here for work." He's not going to tell her that work means he kills people. Can of worms, right there. It also doesn’t make for good conversation. Good thing he's out of uniform. He doesn’t relish having to explain the bullets stashed in his vest pocket.

"I thought all you Australians had mustaches and chest hair and went shirtless everywhere," says Luz. "And were ultraviolent super-geniuses." The unavoidable Saxton Hale angle.

"I'm a rare breed," Sniper clarifies. "I prefer the bush. Never interested in Australium, what it did. Never cared to fistfight." He fights best from a distance. “Preferred slingshots, droppin’ things from trees.” He briefly wonders if he should make a drop bear joke, then figures it would be lost on her.

Luz leans over her suitcase, getting a little more comfortable with each passing moment. Sniper keeps his eyes on the road for now but in his peripheral vision, and in the sound of her voice, he can detect relaxation. "What was the worst part about moving here?" she asks.

Justifying his career choice to his parents. "Remembering to drive on the right."

She smiles, and it's not the least bit tinged with worry anymore. Sniper can't help but smile back.

They pass a sign welcoming them to Teufort, population: too many for Sniper’s taste. “Hope you don’t mind a stop when we get in. I’ve got something to pick up.”

“Just don’t strand me.” She tries again to play it off as a joke, but it’s only armor; he sees through it.

“There’s no stranding this van. I plumb live out of it.” Smacks the steering wheel lightly for emphasis.

“Pfft. Like a turtle living out of a shell.”

Sure. Yeah. Bloodthirsty Aussie turtle.

“Or a snail,” she suggests.

Bloodthirsty snail? Australia’s got some right strange animals but Sniper can’t recall a snail ever out to get him. The thought is absurd. He puts it aside.

It’s only two more minutes til they reach the place. A few turns at quiet intersections and then they’re in a part of town Sniper’s never bothered to visit, a part he didn’t even know existed, frankly. The luthier is evidently insane, which isn’t saying much, given that the entire population of Teufort is morons, but the building out of which the business seems to be based is…

“That’s a shack, Mick,” Luz says, with some amount of alarm. She’s not wrong. There is a sign, though it is vague and derelict. The windows are dusty. There are no guitars visible. The address, however, is correct, and Engineer doesn’t get stuff like that wrong. “Is it safe?” Luz asks.

“Wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve dealt with this week,” says Sniper. He does not elaborate on what the worst thing was, which was the enemy Soldier, who’d been sporting an eagle’s head that day for reasons Sniper could not decipher. He’d rocket-jumped into his nest and bashed his head to smithereens with a shovel. Thinking about it puts him in a mood. “If I don’t come back,” he tells Luz, mindful that he does not have the safety net of respawn to catch him, “there’s a phone on the corner.” To call who, the police? Her mum?

He climbs out of the van and ambles up to the door. Cash only. Won't post it. Place looks abandoned. Is this a guitar shop or a weapons hand-off? Sniper knocks on the door and finds it ajar. He pushes it open; there is indeed a shop here. There’s a counter and everything, only the lights are off and the racks look empty. Sniper is only a little on edge. Then, from the shadows, what sounds like a man cries out:

“STATE YOUR BUSINESS.”

Kook. “Just a customer.”

The speaker comes out from the shadows. Aside from the pallor and the trembling, he looks like any ordinary white New Mexican over fifty. A bit pudgy, a little bug-eyed, though that could just be his face. He wears an apron. With him comes the smell of sawdust—Sniper can smell it meters away. “You’d better not say that any louder. And don’t come in any closer, either,” the old man says.

Sniper ventures further. “… here to pick up a guitar.”

The old man just about has a fit. “Ghk! Not out loud, they’ll hear you.” He swallows, crosses the room, disappears behind the counter. Sniper hears two—no, three locks clicking, followed by what must be the man fumbling through records. “What’s the... uh. What’s the name?”

“Conagher? My mate’s.”

“You really shouldn’t tell me that. Get more people involved than you need to… Fine, fine, just… you have the cash?”

“Yeah, I gotcha.” He withdraws the envelope Engineer gave him from his pocket and reflexively looks over his shoulder. This is ridiculous, but life is already so bloody weird. The bloke said not to come any closer, so Sniper underhand-throws the envelope across the shop. The luthier is so nervous that he misses the catch and the envelope strikes the back wall where Sniper figures guitars were once displayed.

More fumbling. The envelope of cash goes in the guy’s apron pocket rather than a register. “One minute,” he says, and disappears through a door without elaborating. Sniper wants very badly to ask this man if he needs help but has a sinking feeling it might kill the guy, which isn’t in the plan for today. The paranoia strikes him as unnecessary. What sort of life would a luthier have to lead in order to perform transactions in such secrecy?

His thoughts are interrupted as the man comes back out with a guitar-shaped case. He does not offer it to Sniper like a normal person would, which at least makes sense because none of this is normal. Rather, he sets it on the ground and shoves it across the smooth wooden floor of the shop with astonishing strength. Sniper stops it with his boot. He hopes the case is padded.

He’d tip his hat if he were wearing it. He salutes instead, not knowing what the man is expecting and just needing to get out. The job is complete. He grabs the case by the handle and shuts the door behind him.

“That seemed weird,” Luz says when he takes his place behind the wheel.

“Strange as,” Sniper affirms. “Not sure what got into that fella.”

“This whole town is weird,” says Luz, shaking her head like she’s trying to shake off the weirdness. "So is it your guitar?"

"Nah, it's my mate's." Technically correct. "'S why I'm in town today, actually. Picking it up for him."

She eyes the case, smiles a little. “Are you gonna show me or what?”

Sniper wouldn’t ordinarily see the harm in it, but recent events have set him on edge. He looks around, sees nobody coming, and so he sets the case between them and opens it with some difficulty. There it is, as promised, a custom-made acoustic guitar shining and glinting in the mid-morning sun.

"Oh, wow," Luz says. She touches it lightly on the neck. The strings shimmer underneath her fingers. Although there is still blood, she does not leave a trace. Whisper of a touch.

"Beautiful instrument," Sniper mutters. Sniper notices that Luz’s hands, too, are freckled, and that her fingernails are short and her cuticles dry. He crushes the impolite urge to touch her hand with his own.

The oddness of the transaction makes him feel like he’s looking at something illegal, so he only lingers a few seconds more before closing the case again.

Luz makes conversation about it. "You play any instruments or do you just carry other people's?"

Sniper knows, in a dim way, that she's making fun of him, but decides in a split second to treat the question seriously. "Yeah, the sax."

"No, really?"

"I'm not lying. Been a minute, though.” He adjusts his aviators and starts the van up. He wants to get out of this neighborhood. “You hungry?” He isn’t, but she might be.

“I could eat,” Luz shrugs.

***

Next thing he knows they're in a booth in Teufort's second-best diner (out of three). Sniper leaves the guitar in the van and shoves it down in the space where he usually puts his feet. The old man’s paranoia has rubbed off on him. On top of that, he hopes he is not recognized, or if he is, that nobody throws anything at him. If they do see him and know him, they’re not gonna like him carrying a guitar case on top of that. Never mind that he doesn’t like toting his rifle around in public. It’s a tool, not a trophy. He thinks that Luz, being young-ish and pretty, should be insurance against any antipathy from the townspeople, but some people have no respect for women.

The staff doesn’t antagonize him, which is good, but means he’s overthought it, and now he’s a little embarrassed, though he does his best not to show it. Luz carries on like normal, orders an obscene amount of breakfast food. Sniper doesn’t mind, can pay for all this and then some; to be polite, and because the drive back is long, he gets eggs and toast. They both get mugs filled with thoroughly mediocre coffee. Luz dumps a gratuitous amount of sugar into hers. Before he can say anything, she gets up and strides to the jukebox, big and wide and shiny and new, with a kitsch picture of imaginary mountains decorating the top strip above the buttons. He watches her as she fishes nickels and dimes from her jacket pockets, feeds and takes a minute to survey the options before punching (he squints) B-5, C-6, and G-9 and strolling back to the booth.

It takes a second for her to start talking. "You work around here?”

Sniper doesn’t blink. “Why do you think that?”

Luz shrugs. “You know your way around town okay.”

“I’m a couple’a towns over, technically.” That’s a lie. “Mostly I keep to the country.” Also a lie. He’s crammed in that base with the rest of his team and the enemy and only gets time to himself during ceasefires.

Luz leans forward. “What do you do?”

Ah, piss. "Nothing much. Ranch work. Driving around's the most of it." He doesn’t like lying. He'd hoped she would avoid the question but here they are. He notices now that the first song she chose is the new Stones single, the one with a chorus about wild horses.

"That's too bad," she says, and actually looks sad. "I was hoping we could compare."

The song has distracted him; he hopes he understood her implication. "You've got work yourself?"

"Looking for it right now. I'm kind of a wanderer. You saw my art supplies? That's my prep. I do murals," she says. Her first plate of breakfast food comes, a short stack of waffles, as do Sniper’s eggs. She pours syrup over the stack, then cuts up waffles and talks at the same time. "I’ve done them in empty pools. I mostly do them on the sides of old buildings. Sometimes I even get a government commission.” Forkful to her mouth, talking while eating. It’s kind of cute; she’s in a groove. “For six months I was painting a huge one in the lobby of the county courthouse." She smiles wistfully, then makes a face like she's just realized something. "Here, I'll show you what I mean." She abandons the waffles, reaches into her inner jacket pocket, and produces a thick wallet-journal combination that looks like it's seen better days. From some pocket in this wallet, she plucks a sheaf of small photographs. "My portfolio," she explains with a sly grin. She flips through until she reaches one she deems satisfactory, plucks it from the pack, and hands it to Sniper like she's a magician. Is this your card? The waffles kind of ruin the effect. “This is a shot of my most recent.”

He takes it and stares at it, trying to capture every detail. What appears to be a dragon or serpent with rainbow feathers undulates on a wide wall, painted in a style some would call primitive (though Sniper hates that word fiercely), and a small-scale Luz-from-the-past stands proud in front of her work, as she should. In the picture, she has a braid down to her waist. "You cut your hair," he mutters, not intending to be heard, but she hears him.

She’s attacking the waffles again. Her second plate arrives, this one loaded with bacon and eggs. She spears a waffle bit and dunks it in a sunny yolk, eats it like that. "Yeah, soon after that, actually. I got sick of braiding it."

"Reckon you kept getting paint in it," Sniper says, meaning it as a joke. He hands the photo back and her fingers brush his as she takes it. He has forgotten his own eggs; he pokes at them with his fork.

"You wouldn't believe," Luz says. "I was a walking paintbrush. Had to wash it with thinner more than once, and I don't want to know what those fumes did to me."

As much as he appreciates the practical side of it, he can't help but think that the braid looks beautiful on her, at least in that picture. It also takes so long to grow hair out. He's been growing his out in the back lately. Weeks. Months, felt like, just for it to graze his neck. He's been told it looks good. Does Luz like it? Why is he asking himself that? He should eat his eggs.

He does not eat his eggs but the waitress comes by to refill his coffee so he drinks some more of that. To distract himself, he asks: "How'd you end up doing snakes?"

"It's kind of... I guess you could say convoluted."

"I've got all day." He technically doesn't, but people like it when he says that.

Luz seems to like it, anyway. "My mom’s Mexican, said we’ve got Aztec blood. I dunno about that, but she told me stories when I was a kid. About Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli. You know." She grins again. She pronounces the names effortlessly, the way someone who’s heard them twenty thousand times would say them.

“The Aztecs. They did the human sacrifices, right?” He knows a thing or two about spilling blood and resolves once more not to tell her.

“Yep. Really gruesome. I loved it. It was all only stories to me, though.”

Sniper’s suspicions prove correct. She’s a rare level head in a world full of idiots. He finally takes a bite of his cold eggs.

“You wanna hear one of the stories?” she asks. She has a smile on like she really wants to tell him.

“Make it a good one,” says Sniper. See, he’s smiling, too. He’s having fun. This is good. This is normal.

***

She tells him a story about Quetzalcoatl, and should Sniper bother to do any research afterwards, he will find that she and her mother have taken great liberties with the subject matter.

This is the story about how Quetzalcoatl’s world, born into the age of the Wind Sun, was totally destroyed, and had to be rebuilt into the world of the age of the Fire Sun. There was a giant, you see, and giants do not like to be disturbed; the Wind Sun world was full of noise, and this gave him so much grief that he decided to wipe the slate clean. He made a plan and acted on it: he went to the cities and picked off their kings first, popping them in his mouth, ceremonial headdresses and all (though this gave him indigestion). Then, when people made a fuss, he ate them up, too, scooping them up in handfuls. Not that it really helped whatever migraine he had, and he did not understand that life was full of pain regardless. He just really wanted to shut them all up, and this was the best way he knew.

Naturally, Quetzalcoatl heard all of this. It was very hard to ignore: he was in charge of the winds. The cries of the slaughtered carried and the bestial bellows of the giant both carried very well across those same winds. He knew he couldn’t let this asshole win: this was his world! These were his people! He flew as fast as he could to the scene of the crime, but when he got there, the giant had swallowed the very last human being. Quetzalcoatl was devastated and, well, he summoned winds to blow the guy apart, actually. He summoned one big wind to tear off the giant’s arms, which went east, fragmenting further as they flew, the chunks of muscle and bits of bone splashing into the sea, forming islands and atolls. Then Quetzalcoatl wound himself around the giant’s legs and toppled the monster. Then, as the giant lay prone on the ground, Quetzalcoatl summoned one last wind, and the sheer power of it eroded the giant’s body like it was a pile of sand, flesh sanded down and leaving nothing but bones. The tiny skeletons of all humanity, which had been stored inside the giant’s stomach, fell into the ground, where they sank into the underworld.

But when he’d finished mopping the jungle floor with the poor guy, between it was apparent that there was very little world left. The winds hadn’t helped. Anything strong enough to shred a giant to pieces was gonna royally fuck with the rest of the world. In fact, that was the kicker: the age of the Wind Sun was called that because that’s how the rest of the gods figured it would all end, with a raging wind storm. Our hero, in trying to save the world, had inadvertently caused its demise, and the kicker? It was according to the prophecy. It was just Quetzalcoatl, there in the middle of the end of the world, everyone dead except for him. He was the only thing left alive, and the saddest he had ever been.

What was he going to do?

***

Luz is silent. She folds her hands behind her empty plate, looks Sniper in the eyes, and does not move a muscle.

Sniper raises an eyebrow. “You gonna tell me the rest?”

“Tune in next week.”

Sniper chuckles; he’s been had. “You’re a clever one. Good story, too.”

Luz shrugs and drags a finger through the pile of syrup where her waffles used to be. “I’m pretty sure Mama made half of it up, anyway.”

“A good story’s a good story.”

They finish up and Sniper pays, adding a hefty tip. When Luz tries to argue, Sniper insists: “Save your money for the road. Kindness of strangers and allat. Speaking of, got a place to stay?"

Luz shrugs. "You know anywhere safe?"

"Motel in the center of town. I'll drive ya." He is absolutely, positively not offering her his bed.

In front of the motel, Luz offers a reminder. "I meant it, you know," she says. "About next week."

Sniper considers the implications, weighs his options. The ceasefires are regular enough. He has no other obligations, barring Mann Co. sending him out on a contract. And he also wants to hear about the plumed serpent. "Sure. I'll be here. Or I'll try to be."

She smiles again, and between the gleam of the light off her sweaty forehead and the dimples on her cheeks, Sniper feels quite woozy. He hopes the glasses hide whatever he's feeling. Wouldn't want to scare her off.

Before he leaves, he thinks of one last thing: “Word of advice, sheila? Don’t drink the water.”

“Bad quality?”

“Lead.”

“Oh.”

He hauls out bottles from the camper van, enough to get her through a week, and now he’s gonna have to come back for her next Saturday, ain’t he? He even helps her haul them into her motel room after she checks in, which looks decent enough, though she strips back the sheets and checks for bugs anyway. The way he leaves her, she’s sitting pretty on the edge of her bed, suitcase not yet open, rucksack of art supplies leaning against the side table, and a small pallet of drinking water in the corner.

“See you later, Mick,” she calls.

“Catch ya, Luz,” he replies without thinking.

First thing he does when he gets back to the van is climb into the camper and piss into a jar. He’d been holding that in for longer than he realized. Part of it was routine and part of it was because he just hadn’t wanted to stop talking to her.

It's only hours later when he gets back to the base and he crosses the threshold, guitar case in hand, that he fully registers what has occurred. He's managed to meet a new person, make conversation without coming off as a wanker. There is another meeting coming. The notion that he has done all this, never mind that there is more of it in the future, gets him all jittery. Or maybe that's the coffee flooding his veins. Hard to tell.

He wonders if it's wrong to want to kiss her. Wonders too if she feels anything for him. Thinks mostly about filling out a supply request form for extra bottles of water.

***

He reaches Engie's workshop without having been conscious of heading in that direction. He's thinking too much again. Not paying attention to the world around him.

For what it’s worth, Engie looks pleased as punch when Sniper strolls in holding the case. He and Pyro are in his workshop, evidently reviewing an upgrade to their flamethrower. Hasn't even properly examined the thing. Likely just glad to be able to play again. "Come 'round tonight. I'll get a fire going." Pyro visibly perks up and Engie grins that down-home grin. "I thought you'd like that. If you're early, I'll even let you start it."

"Hrr brrdrh," says Pyro with no small enthusiasm.

That night after dinner (Medic cooked something palatable and German-sounding), Sniper decides to take another shower, which is rare. He hates having wet hair, especially when it's longer in the back, but he's unusually tired and needs to feel water on his skin. He's not sure what happened. Maybe the drive into town and back. The dust, the sun.

Maybe Luz.

He shuts the water off.

He's not the first one at Engie's fire. Pyro showed up early, and as promised he seems to have gathered a good bit of kindling, which they are now attempting to set aflame with a match. Their restraint impresses Sniper; he is used to seeing them using their fascination to wreak havoc.

"Stretch!" Engineer raises a hand—his ungloved robotic hand. Sniper raises a hand back and wonders just how intense the picking is going to be tonight if Engie’s ungloved the Gunslinger. “Come on down. You ain’t the first, but you got a front-row seat.” He’s got the guitar out and he’s tuning it. Sliding up and down the scale by microtones, plucking strings, twisting pegs.

“Bonza. It’s been a crap week.”

“Whew, don’t I know it. Good campfire’s the thing for it. Sing your cares away, too.”

Sniper perches on the edge of a chair that he assumes Engineer set out. “No singing for me, mate.”

“Ain’t no problem. I got plenty of songs.” Crikey, he could read you the phone book and still sound reassuring. “You want a beer?”

“You offering?”

"You saved me an errand. Least I could do is give you a beer." He pauses and grabs a bottle from a cooler full of ice. Mexican brand. Sniper is unfamiliar, but takes it and opens it with his teeth anyway. A pop and a hiss and it’s his. He guzzles half of it down before it fizzes over.

“That fella you ordered from, he’s a real kook,” says Sniper.

Engineer chuckles. “So I heard. Figured that if I wanted something good, it’d be better if the person doing it was a little eccentric. You get the best craft from oddballs, I find.”

Easy for him to say, Sniper thinks, given his propensity to indulge his own berko shit—oddball tendencies. Whatever. “Paranoid bastard. Not that I can judge.”

“No, I’d rightly say you couldn’t.” Twing, twang.

“But it’s not guns or the bags or anything. Just guitars. What’s all the shadows for?”

“City passed a law banning guitars last year.”

“Heh?”

Engie stops in his tuning. “You hadn't heard?"

“Nah.”

"It was all over the papers 'bout this time last year. They were tired of the hippies busking and I suppose they went overkill."

“So they’re the kooks, not him.”

“You know as well as I do they’re all crazy. He just happens to be the right kind of crazy in the middle of a town full of the wrong kind.” Then Engineer goes back to tuning.

Sniper tosses back the rest of his beer. Needs it after hearing that.

“You want another?” Engie asks.

“Bloody hell, why not.” He catches a second bottle and opens it with his teeth like before.

“You’re gonna chip an incisor one day,” Engie remarks.

“Mine to chip, mate.”

The fire is catching pretty well, and the smoke rises toward the rapidly purpling sky in a thin gray line. Pyro claps his hands. A job well done.

“Might just be us tonight,” says Sniper, scanning the area as best as he can for the darkness. 

“Fine by me,” says Engie. He strums, the strings tuned and resonant. 

The show, as it were, begins quietly and without a fuss. Engie strums more, plays something hesitant and meandering that settles over the campfire like a story he's not sure how to tell, but which still sounds beautiful and resonant. It resolves, then, into an arpeggiated waltz, low and gentle.

He sings, softly. It's about how this is not his guitar, and he's just bringing it to a friend. Sniper knows there is a joke in there, but the way it's sung is too sweet for him to feel bad and too sorrowful to laugh. The man Engie is singing about, singing for, longs for a woman, as is so often the case with sad guitar songs. It swirls around into something vaguely resembling his own day. The meeting, the longing, the ultimate withdrawal into the night, away from all the fun, alone. If Sniper didn’t know any better (and it occurs to him that really, he doesn’t) he’d have thought their own Spy was tailing him, playing some kind of sick game by feeding Engie details, but such a scheme feels too personal and petty even for Spy. It’s only a coincidence. But bugger him if it ain’t a meaningful one.

The waltz resolves into a set of chords that ease the tension. Engie looks up from the guitar, eyes full of pride, that little smirk. He acts humble, like he always does, but he knows he’s done a good job.

Sniper cannot fathom Pyro's face but if they aren’t full of adoration he will eat his hat.

He leans back and drinks deeply from the bottle.

Full moon overhead in the darkness. Stars pinned up there. American constellations.

It's going to be a cold night.

Chapter Text

The next week is full of death. Sniper downs the enemy team like so many rabbits, especially the Scout the way he zigs and zags across the battlements—only things missing are a pair of big ears, Sniper thinks, and a fluffy little tail. It’s good numbers, and he should feel good, but stress is getting to him. It’s not job stress. There is a pervasive unease, as though the tables will turn on him for a reason he has not yet detected that comes from a place he cannot see yet, if he can even comprehend it in the first place. He eats a lot of peanut butter, drinks a lot of coffee, and fills a lot of empty jars with piss. None of it helps.

Engie, on the other hand, has a swagger in his step. No doubt the guitar has healed something in him. He plays a lot more when the day is done, and more and more often the other mercs sit down to listen, be around a fire like that first quiet night or in the mess hall or even in his workshop, where the acoustics make the songs echo and reverberate. His picking gets so intense—and with the power of his incredibly cool robot hand, things can get very intense—the notes sound less like a guitar and more like a waterfall, with how they cascade and spill over. It is all very impressive and everyone else loves it, even Sniper, who gets there late and stands by the door if there is one, but doesn’t leave until it’s over.

Today on the field, Engie has gone full rancho relaxo. Look at him, Sniper thinks with no small amount of envy. Slouching in his custom chair, umbrella attached, beer rack close at hand, and his sentries gunning down any dummy who dares get closer than twenty feet. Once or twice he is disturbed by the enemy Spy, who is clever enough to cloak and slap sappers on Engie’s buildings but not clever enough to escape undetected every time. Sniper is reminded of stories of men who enter meditative trances and are snuck up on but manage, thanks to finely honed senses, to dodge and parry blows as though their eyes were not closed and their backs were not turned.

Despite this, Engineer does not have eyes everywhere; he must make sacrifices sometimes. Like now. Sniper watches through his scope as he seems to hear something, turns in his chair, and sees with some alarm the oncoming enemy Soldier. The helmeted lug wields his trusty shovel and lets lose a harrowing war cry as he rushes at Engineer solo. It is a stupid trick, but it works. Engie pulls his glove off, reveals the robot hand underneath, brandishes it like a gun. The Soldier does not slow down and that is his big mistake. Engineer is the shortest of the bunch, which means he can get in close, duck under the path of the shovel as it cuts the air and pop up again just in time to hammer the Soldier in the gut. He almost folds in half for the pain, and it’s the perfect position for Engie to slam his metal hand into the other man’s face.

Sniper swears he hears a bone break. Still peering through the scope, but no longer concerned with Engineer, who has proven he can handle himself, Sniper detects a shimmer of movement in the corner and swings a little lower. Is it heat? No, it moves like a human, and it has a profile vaguely in the shape of someone wearing a tailored suit. It’s the goddamn Spy again, cloaked, sneaking up on a sentry that has proven quite deadly to the opposing team today. Sniper does not hesitate, does not even allow himself to see what plan the Spy might have, only pulls the trigger.

Boom. Headshot. It’s nothing.

The next thing he registers is Engineer again. He’s back in his chair and he knows what has happened, looks on the decloaked corpse with a hint of amusement, just something funny that came to pass while he was trying to enjoy a cold one. He hoists his beer bottle in Sniper’s direction, a nod and smile of acknowledgment. A congratulations.

Although he is sure Engie can’t see, Sniper gives him a thumbs-up anyway.

He feels better, but only a little.

***

And then it is Saturday afternoon.

“Half-thought you wouldn’t come. Guess I was wrong.” Luz is happy to see him. She wears a Mexican sundress embroidered in reds and oranges across the neck and chest, and a cute green cardigan to keep the sun off. Sniper finds himself across from Luz in the same booth as last time. They are back at the second-best diner in Teufort, and nobody is throwing anything at him, be it a mean glance or five plates in a row. He is much more relaxed. His turn to go to the jukebox, and when he walks up he only thinks of how Luz might see him. He sees a Spanish song he doesn’t recognize, realizes he’s curious, feeds in coins, and punches in the code.

“You like this song?” Luz asks when he gets back to the table.

Sniper shrugs. “Be honest, I don’t have a clue what it is or who’s singing it.”

“Me neither,” says Luz. “Something new?”

“Yeah. Shooting blind today.”

They just have coffees this time. She tells him about the sketches she did this week. “I usually don’t do any prep until I have a site in mind, but I dunno. Guess the creative juices got flowing once I stopped and rested.”

“Funny, ain’t it? How that works.”

“Don’t I know it. Murals are usually just something I do, you know? Like going to church on Sunday.” Luz looks out the window. Her mug of coffee is full to the brim, loaded again with sugar. She holds it up like it is the most precious thing she’s about to put in her mouth. She is dreaming with her eyes open. “But I dunno. I’ve been having dreams about Quetzalcoatl, and they linger long enough when I wake up that I can draw him, and then I just… draw the wall around what I’ve done. I don’t think any buildings exist like the ones I’ve drawn.”

“You find a place to do one here, yet?”

“No, but I haven’t asked yet, either. I think I need the quiet more than I do the work, right now.” She looks out the window. Sniper lets his gaze linger over her. She looks good today. The light illuminates her hair and reflects off her skin. He wants to touch her, but can't. He doesn't know what she wants.

So he turns the conversation around to something he knows. “I said last time I wanted to hear the rest of the story, but what if…”

“What if?”

Sniper leans down, picks a Lucky Strike from the pack he keeps in his sock and lights it at the table. "You told me yours, I'll tell you mine." It's all he's got. He hopes she will like it. "What do you know about the Dreaming?"

"Nothing, I guess."

This is ideal. He takes a drag and begins. "A few years back, when I was still in Australia, I worked hunting. Big game. I moved out to the Never Never and met the people. That’s when I got obsessed. Wanted to know everything about how they did things, their lives and stories. The more I learnt, the more confused I got, but that didn't stop me.”

“So what’s it all about?”

Sniper has always found this part hard to describe to normal people. “People think it’s some kinda magic. It ain’t. It’s a whole way of living; it’s like law. It comes from the earth. It tells you how to treat the world, and how the world will treat you back.”

He tells her about the intricacies of skin groups and how it changes depending on parentage, and how one group can only marry one other group and their children will be a third group, and how the cycle repeats. He tells her about songlines and walking across the continent and how white men believed they were animal tracks. Burned them like they were. But if they’d only fucking listened to the stories, they’d have known they were destroying a way of life that had been perfectly serviceable for thousands of years. It takes a while. They get their coffees refilled twice and the light outside changes drastically until it feels like they've up and moved streets. Still, Luz is enraptured. At least, Sniper thinks she acts enraptured.

“You said they had stories,” Luz says, and her big brown eyes get bigger. “Tell me a story, Mick.”

Sniper likes the way she says it, likes the way she looks when she leans over the table and listens to him. So takes another drag and he tells her a story.

***

A very, very long time ago, back when the world was yet young and many lands had not been formed because those whose bodies became them had not yet been born, there was a being who went by many names, but who everyone agreed was a serpent. The serpent was the color of the rainbow. It lived in watering holes and moved from one to another by arcing across the sky.

During this time, the Wagilag sisters, who were a pair, were walking together. One of them was with child. They grew tired under the hot sun and sat at a watering hole where the rainbow serpent rested, though they could not tell this was the case; they were tired from a long day’s walk. It came to pass that the sister with child was seized with pain, and she gave birth next to that same watering hole. With the birth there was blood, and the blood flowed into the waterhole, and the serpent smelled it as soon as it touched the water. Rage! Utter rage at being disturbed and dirtied! This would not stand.

The Wagilag sisters and the newly born children were not so close when the serpent awoke. They'd gone to another village and were asleep in a hut together. But the birth blood had left a scent and the trail was true, so when the serpent skulked across the land, flicking its tongue to track the smell, it had no problems finding the sisters, who did not know the nature of their transgression. Never mind that; a serpent has its own priorities. And so the serpent came to the end of the scent trail and burst into the hut and saw the Wagilag sisters and the children, and he ate them up.

The serpent was content. He slithered out of the hut and was intending to find another waterhole when he made his own mistake: brushing alongside an anthill. These ants were just as territorial as he was, but being much smaller, could not do much in the way of eating something as big as the rainbow serpent. But they weren't without recourse. They sent out their fastest charioteers, and these charioteers carried with them their best biter. It took very little time to catch up to the rainbow serpent, and when they did, the best biter bit into the serpent's side as hard as he could.

The sting! The burning! The agony! This vengeful ant had bitten him in exactly the wrong spot, and he wriggled and writhed and shook in pain, so much so that his stomach was jumbled and he could not hold down what he had swallowed. The sisters and their children came back up his throat and out of his mouth, but they had changed: they were no longer human sisters and their children, but that which makes up the land. The rainbow serpent spewed them forth and they were changed into Arnhem Land, which has two halves, the East and the West. The serpent saw this and realized that he had better make it up to everyone who was going to live there. When he spoke to the people, he spoke in the sisters’ voices. When the people listened to the echoes of the sisters, they learned the secrets of the world, and how to walk in it, and they kept the sayings safe.

***

“And that’s why you don’t give birth next to watering holes,” Sniper concludes, dry as the desert. He stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table. "’Less you want to get made into a landmass."

Luz snorts laughing. Then she says, “Hey, we both have snakes.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. I’ve got Quetzalcoatl and you’ve got the Rainbow Serpent.”

“Suppose I do.”

"What's its real name?"

Sniper shrugs. "It’s got heaps of proper names. Depends on who you ask. Every Mob’s got a different name and a different story. Tens of thousands of years going. Bound to be variants.”

“You seem to know a hell of a lot.”

“There’s more. Heaps they wouldn’t tell me. Couldn’t. I’m not one of them.”

It seems natural to end it there. An inordinate amount of time has passed. The sun is starting to set; it’s disappeared over the other side of the building. The sky facing them has turned a dusky blue.

Sniper has shut up, but his thoughts have not lost momentum in the ensuing silence. In fact, they’ve grown stronger, enveloping him like a dream. He’s not in the diner anymore. He’s not even in New Mexico. He’s back in the Northern Territory, staring at the sky, clouds drifting. His boots are covered in red dust and the sun beats down on him. He knows that in the rainy season, this place turns into a carpet of green, but right now, the plants and animals hide. There’s people in the distance. He knows their names, they know his, and they have come to an agreement: once every week, he shoots, cleans, and butchers a kangaroo for them. He sees their sons leaving and not coming back, except for one, who digs his hands into the earth and weeps. Tonight, before Sniper goes to sleep, he will build the smallest possible fire and stare at the sky again, and he will see the Southern Cross like it’s an old friend.

“Hey, Mick.”

Luz’s voice snaps him out of his dream. “Howzat?”

“I want to see a sunset. I’ve been cooped up in my room all week.”

“Haven’t even gone out for a waltz?”

“I admit, after last Saturday, I was kind of put off.”

“This town’s like that. You sure you don’t want to move on?”

Luz smiles in a way Sniper can’t quite read.

He remembers what she said about the sunset. "We can go out. It'll be a bit cloudy tonight, though."

"Even better. More interesting than pure sky. There'll be shadows."

“I always preferred pure sky, meself.”

Sniper pays for this meal, too, and hopes Luz does not feel like she is extorting him. He is doing this because it is polite, and because he has funds to spare.

They go off road. He drives the van out to the middle of the desert just in time for the colors to reach their peak. Pink orange red light scatters across the buttes and hoodoos. They sit in the middle of it all, snug in the cab of the van. It all feels specially set up for them, and the air seems to crackle with some energy Sniper cannot source or define.

Luz breaks the silence. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Sniper nods. "Stunning as."

“Sometimes I feel like I’m walking across an alien planet, moving through here.”

Sniper pauses to consider the sentiment. “Guess I’m the opposite.”

“How come?” Her questions do not annoy him. This is rare.

“Feels like home.” The talk of the Dreaming has gotten him enthralled with the unfathomable depths of time. The world is full of wonder, and he is compelled to speak because it is so beautiful. “I did some research on this place, too, when I knew I was coming here for work.”

Luz turns to him. “What’d you find?”

"This whole place used to be underwater. Millions of years ago." Sniper's voice comes out soft and scratchy. He is relaxed in a way he is not used to being.

"So where we are, there used to be fish?"

"Stranger things than fish, maybe."

"You like strange things. "

He feels a kinship with them. "S'pose I might." He adjusts his shades. "I'm not averse to modern comforts, though, that's fair dinkum."

"What's a comfort to you?"

"Bed. Radio. Cold beer."

"I prefer fresh waffles and air conditioning, if that's alright with you."

"Ain't a thing wrong with 'em. Just not my taste."

Luz laughs and punches him ever so lightly on the arm. “You’re weird.”

“I’m a bushman. Comes with the territory.”

Silence. Luz shifts on the seat. Sniper doesn't move a muscle.

"Mick?"

"Hmm?"

She leans in, eyes soft, reaches for his leg. “Can I kiss you, Mick?”

It's been coming. He sees it now, too late. “If you want,” he says.

Luz giggles. Oh, God, she giggles. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She looks up at him. He looks down at her. Their eyes meet. Neither of them can break contact, and Sniper can see clearly that Luz is not just being cute, but is aflame with desire. Her half-lidded eyes, big and brown; her slightly parted lips that now seem swollen. How long has it been for him? For her? He acts. He pulls her in even closer so her head is touching his chest. He leans down to meet her, touches her face, lifts her chin, examines her delicately. Her lips twitch into a smile. Whatever happens to his body cannot be put into words. 

"C'mere, angel," he whispers.

She practically leaps, kisses him with a ferocity he has not known since he was a randy teenage boy trying to make it with equally randy teenage girls. It's almost embarrassing but it feels far too good to stop, so he lets her touch him as much as she wants. Her hands go underneath his shirt and plow through his chest hair, graze his nipples, grab his sides. Sniper nearly rips the buttons off his shirt so she can touch him more, which she does, though she heads south pretty quickly. Off with the belt, too, then. He only shoves his pants down partway, not even thinking about how long it's been, only thrilled that she wants him and is between his legs.

She takes him into her mouth and he hisses from the contact. He is too used to wanking and so the shock of another human being is enough to down him, but Luz's mouth is warm and wet and she makes noises around him like he's delicious. He can't do much other than grasp her hair and sigh whenever she moves up and down along him.

Then, without warning, she pulls off, sits up, and asks: "Can we fuck?"

“Yeah,” Sniper says, like an idiot.

Luz's smile is utterly brilliant. She shrugs off her cardigan and pulls off her dress, tosses her underwear aside. They fuck right there in the cab. They try with him on top first but he can't keep from slipping off the seat, so they switch and she sits in his lap and rides him like it's going out of fashion. Sniper knows he isn't lasting long like this, not with her tits in his face and her sighs and moans unsettling something in him that has been sleeping for years. The light of the sunset makes Luz look angelic, makes it all feel ultra-real, sends him to a higher plane. He's bloody whimpering. No, really, he's actually crying, begging her: "I wanna come inside. Please. Please. Let me, please."

"I want you to," Luz says, and he's a dead man.

When he comes it hits him like a bullet to the chest. He barely has time to say so but Luz doesn't seem to mind at all, not that he needs to clarify matters when he cries out like that, tears streaming down his red hot face. He leans into her neck and screams with the pleasure of release, smells her sweat and feels her tighten around him. It lasts for what feels like forever but then the fog clears and he's totally wrung out and it was what, five seconds? Best bloody five seconds of his life, he reckons.

Luz climbs off him and sits next to him, completely naked. The cab is full of the stench of sex and sweat. They're both dripping and need a good wipe-down.

"That was fun," Luz breathes. "No one saw us, right?"

"Nah." Sniper wipes his brow, adjusts his shades, and catches his breath. "Not within cooee."

“What’s that mean?” Luz asks, genuinely at a loss.

“No one’d hear us, either,” he explains. Then he shifts in his seat. “I need a piss.”

“So do I,” says Luz.

“I’ll get you a jar.”

“You can’t piss out in the middle of the desert?”

“I’m in the habit of not leaving a trace.”

It’s dark out by now, never mind the isolation, so Sniper can half-pull his trousers back on to retrieve both jars and towels. They relieve themselves next to the camper van; he politely looks away when Luz squats over the jar he brings her. “What, like you didn’t just stick it in me?” she teases him, and he means to say “I try to be polite” but it comes out “Ehhhhhh” and Luz laughs so hard he’s scared she’ll topple over. But more than anything, Sniper is is grateful that he doesn’t have to explain why he has multiple piss jars. It occurs to him that he has to keep hers now, and doesn’t know how to feel about that. His piss is one thing. A lady’s is another. He wipes the mess off his crotch, pisses into his own jar, and zips up; he’ll think about it later.

When they climb back in the cab, Luz says, unprompted, "Don't worry about getting me pregnant, by the way. I'm on the pill." She takes the small towel Sniper offers and wipes between her legs.

Sniper is embarrassed that he had not known to ask about it in the first place. "No worries, then?" His stomach does a flip.

"Not unless you have any diseases." She pulls her dress on over her head and wraps herself in her cardigan; it’s gotten cold quickly.

"I'm clean, deadset." Because she is his first in years. "What about you?"

"I don't sleep around." She sounds mildly offended. Maybe she’s just huddling in her sweater.

"You did with me."

Ah, she’s angry now. "Don't make me out to be something I'm not, Mick."

"I didn't mean... We're both... impulsive. That's all."

Another lapse into silence, this one less comfortable. Luz breaks it. "You got a smoke?"

They share one, the second-to-last Lucky Strike from the pack Sniper keeps in his sock. Night has set upon the desert and the cherry end of the cigarette is the brightest thing in the cab. They pass it back and forth til Luz smokes it to the filter and stubs it out in the ashtray on the dashboard.

The smoke calms him down but it’s still a lot to deal with. It's not just the sex and all its smells and sounds and touches, but the closeness without killing. He has shot and stabbed the enemy so many times and they have done the same and worse to him, and they are all cursed to get put back together and do it over and over again until someone higher up decides enough is enough—by what metric is unclear. It is all a job. It is all undeath. It is all violence, and it sits in him the way other people have nicer, kinder things in their hearts, wives and children and songs. Every frustrated call back to his parents reminds him of this. He is not normal. The straight world, thoroughly fucked though it may be, has no place for him. Whatever just happened feels like an anomaly, something he’s not supposed to have.

Luz turns her head back towards him and kisses him on the cheek, then on the mouth, long and lingering. Her tongue snakes out and she runs her hands through his hair and he kisses her back.

His thoughts collapse into each other and like waking up from a dream, his eyes snap open.

He drives her back, of course, because he is polite. She lingers in the parking lot and Sniper is not sure what to do. He has never been with a woman like this before and is lost on the finer points of the etiquette. Thankfully, Luz takes matters into her own hands. “Next Saturday won’t work. I’m gonna be asking around to see if anyone wants a feathered snake on their building, or somewhere.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone,” says Sniper, though he is not sure at all.

“Always worth a look-see,” says Luz. Then she looks at Sniper again, and even in the dark he thinks he can see her eyes sparkle. “I still wanna see you again.”

“Two weeks?” Sniper hears himself suggesting. He even feels a smile tugging at his face.

Luz smiles back. “Two weeks.”

Sniper leans down and kisses her on the cheek. That's what people do, right? “You be good while I’m gone.” Another joke.

“… say that again?”

“Er.” Why did he say that at all? “Be good while I’m gone.”

There is a tension in the air that feels sexual, though he did not intend it to be—and any doubts he has are quelled when Luz kisses him again, laughing, like he has opened a door even she was unsure could be unlocked.

He drives back to the base in silence. No radio or anything. He is, to his surprise, still still dazed by his inadvertent tap into her deeper sexuality, like he’d nudged a rock aside with his boot and found oil spilling into the sand. It could change his life, but with life changes come troubles. He could very well give up his path. He could give up the pay and the thrills and the pain to tell Luz that she’s a good girl, and she’d kiss him just like she had and he’d get painfully hard and they'd fuck like rabbits, he guesses.

Does he want it?

The lure of sniping says: no, you want this more. The blood and killing. The nesting. The war. The thing you are good at.

And the more he mulls it over, the clearer it becomes. The water of his mind was disturbed, and there was sand, but now it’s settling, and he can see the bottom again. He cannot continue this; he is not fit for her. She is too good for him. They are too different. The difference between him and her is an uncrossable chasm. He has made a space for himself in an endless war and has blood on his hands besides. What’s in his heart that’s worth sharing? Even itinerant Luz, waltzing on the edges of the world and painting Quetzalcoatl wherever she lands, has something good in her heart that she can share with normal people.

The desert rolls by. The depth of his mistake haunts him. That night, he does not sleep.

***

On Monday, the ceasefire ends, and that morning, Sniper is murdered. It’s usual for the job, but this time it’s aggravating. He thinks he downs the enemy Spy, sure as hell shoots him in the head and sees a corpse drop to the ground, but evidently this was not the case. He hears his own team’s Spy allude to such techniques occasionally and puts together, too late, that the corpse was not a corpse, but an illusive ruse. His Jarate barrier fails him this time because the Spy doesn’t even deign to cross it, only pulls out a huge silver revolver and aims from the doorway of the little nest. By the time Sniper hears the click of the safety, he can’t do a damn thing, and now he’s the one with a bullet in his temple. The shock overtakes him, mutes the pain as the world goes black.

He wakes up in respawn and he is too tired to move. He’d rather have been backstabbed. Getting backstabbed leaves him mad as a cut snake, usually. A bullet to the head, though, has gotten him dull, like he needs to go to sleep. He rubs his eyes beneath his shades, adjusts his hat and the raised collar of his vest to protect himself from the harsh glare of the interior lights.

Surprisingly, a few seconds later, his own Spy appears behind him, looking irate. “It appears we’ve been bested yet again, copain.”

“That’d be right.” Spy’s a knocker, but he’s not an idiot. “Pyro getcha?”

“Indeed they did. I assume it was my counterpart who did you in?”

“How’d you know?”

“Your tone of voice. To a lesser extent, your facial expression.”

“Engh.” Between shit sleep and getting shot in the head, he’s not in the mood to be analyzed. He grabs the rifle on his shoulder and makes off on his own. If he’s going to grouse, he doesn’t want Spy to see him.

“Bonne chance, camarade,” Spy calls out after him.

Sniper gives a half-hearted wave and quickens his pace so he can find another nest, one that isn’t so accessible if one were to be wearing, say, a designer suit and dress shoes.

***

Despite Spy’s initial analysis of the situation, they come out on top today. When the klaxon blows, victory is declared, and the team reconvenes, Sniper immediately knows it was Heavy and Medic’s doing. “Let’s hear it for the dynamic duo,” he half-shouts, caught up in the frenzy, all of them whooping and cheering. Heavy picks Medic up and spins the German around like they’re Fred and Ginger.

Demoman is cooking tonight to celebrate. Thank fuck. He's the sort of drunk who cooks better when full, and he's looking mighty tipsy tonight. He even sings to himself, though it’s largely songs he’s made up about blowing things to bits interspersed with half-remembered Burns verses. The dish has no name but it smells delicious and there’s plenty of it. Like Smissmas morning, Sniper thinks as he tucks in. Black Scottish cyclops, sweet as can be (despite the enthusiasm for explosives), and a whiz in the kitchen. In a team replete with those of rare breeds, Sniper thinks Demoman might have them all beat.

Nevertheless, Sniper finds himself growing morose in the mess hall. He does not listen to conversations and he does not feel comfortable in his skin. He wants to float away, wishes he were in his bed, dreaming. For no particular reason, he is thinking about Luz again. Or Luz creeps up and plants herself in front of him, refusing to budge. Like a ghost. He remembers her big brown eyes and it’s like he’s staring into them again. The memory of sex consumes him. He is hot and hard and wishes he were not in public.

“Herr Sniper?” Medic leaning over, a little too interested. His voice is a whisper, but not a very discreet one. There is still a shiver of excitement in his voice.

“Henh?” Sniper has no more politeness in his reserves.

“You’re very red in the face.” A sliver of a knife of a smile from Medic. “Could it be you’re having a reaction to—”

“Shut it.”

He does not look to see Medic’s expression change, if it does change. He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs the sides of his head, around his ears. Then, although he wishes very much to fall asleep, he pries his eyes back open. Success. The apparition is no more—but his thoughts still circle him like vultures.

He cannot stop thinking about how to end it. How much should he explain? Should he explain anything at all? Even if he was inclined to tell work stories, and even if he were certain Luz wouldn't get turn tail and run screaming when he told her he was an assassin, he cannot begin to even contextualize his job to her. He kills people, and he likes it and is damn good at it, and those people kill him and it hurts but he comes back because of an extremely specific application of the miracle of science. Forget the motivations, forget the politics. The mechanics and the day-to-day alone are beyond the pale.

She would also maybe not want to know about the Jarate. Nobody likes the Jarate. Shame; it's so efficient. Which reminds him, he still doesn’t know what to do with the jar of her piss. He ought to dump it, but where?

He hasn't got a plan for this sorta thing, and he certainly doesn’t have the brains to figure one out now. He needs… goddammit, he needs help.

Who does one ask for help?

Furthermore, how?

Sniper, more at a loss than ever, resorts to pretending nothing is wrong. He leans back and surveys the rest of the dinner crowd from behind his glasses. Force of habit. Though now the relentless stream of thought is redirected, and he begins, despite himself, to analyze.

Engineer? The night at the campfire was… Sniper can only think of it as reassuring. Out of all the people here, he’s likely to give the best advice. Only problem is that it feels like asking too much. Like he’d be pressuring him into advising him.

His next thought is Spy, but he's sick of spies, even the friendly one. Hard to make himself be vulnerable with someone so condescending, so backstabby. So bleedin' French. Every move around Spy is part of a game he doesn't know how to play—if he can remember that he’s playing it at all.

The rest of the roster isn’t too hopeful, though. Demoman loves his mama but that's apples to oranges where Sniper is concerned, and he's looking more than a little tipsy, well past the point of any potential sagacity. Pyro, bless her, is right out. Scout, Sniper likes well enough, but on top of having a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, he talks about girls like he’s God’s gift to ‘em, and that's more than enough to convince Sniper to disregard his input. Soldier's heart belongs to the goddess Columbia, Heavy only has eyes for his guns, and Medic only has eyes for whatever bleeds and twitches. Though he wouldn't discount something going on between the last two, the way they look at each other when they think no one is around. But that’s none of his business.

Back to the results of his improvised social equation: if he can’t bring himself to confide in Engineer, Spy is his only option. He'll have to swallow his pride on this one. He's not doing it now, either. Would rather shoot himself in the foot than bring up a problem like this in front of everyone. Although it offends his sense of efficiency, he elects to wait it out.

The meal is over but the mercs linger a little, shooting the shit and slowing efforts to clean up. Spy excuses himself from it all, and Sniper has to physically restrain himself from immediately leaping from his seat to follow the man. He finds Spy lurking in the corridor outside the mess hall, about to light an after-dinner cigarette.

He doesn't bother with a preamble, just comes to him, hat literally and figuratively in his hands. "I need your help, mate."

Spy looks unsurprised and unenthused, and pays more attention to his cigarette than to Sniper. "With what matter, exactly?"

"It's..." Sniper finds himself hesitating. He lowers his voice. "It's about a woman."

Spy raises an eyebrow, looks Sniper up and down as though he can ascertain the seriousness of the request from Sniper's posture alone. Maybe he can. In fact, he must, because he replaces his cigarette in his case, snaps it shut, and throws back his shoulders, straightening his suit jacket by the lapels like he does before the start of a match.

"Very well," he announces. "Let us walk."

They do not exchange a word as Spy leads Sniper through empty halls to his designated smoking room, distinguished purpose in his steps. The silence is only broken when they get to the door. "If we are to converse," Spy says, pulling out his key, "let it be dignified, man-to-man, and uninterrupted."

"You think it's that serious?"

Spy unlocks and opens the door and bids Sniper enter first. "But of course. The matter of a woman is always serious, even if no one involved believes so." Spy shuts and locks the door behind them and turns on a floor lamp. Sniper's eyes adjust. The room is huge and dark and sumptuous. Underfoot is a large rug that looks Persian, and in the center are two identical armchairs; between them sits a small, low table on which rest a record player and a small collection of LPs and 45s displayed front-out. In front of what must be a window covered with floor-length curtains is a bar cart laden with glasses, spirits and mixers, an arrangement Sniper doesn't bother to decipher. On another far wall is a fireplace, cold and unlit.

Spy cuts into his observations. "Please, sit. Would you care for a drink?" he asks, remaining businesslike.

"Sure." Sniper takes a seat on one of the armchairs and puts his feet up on the provided ottoman. He sets his hat on the upper wing of the armchair, but keeps his glasses on. He finds things easier to handle when the world is tinted orange.

"Cigarette?" asks Spy, case out again.

"Nah." It feels like a trick.

Spy shrugs and once more pockets the case. "Suit yourself." He crosses to the bar cart, turns on the second floor lamp beside the other chair, and sets to making drinks.

Sniper leans down, inspecting the record collection. The room is cozy, but not the kind he's used to. He likes his camper van mess, drinking a beer with the radio playing whatever Stones song is hot right now and gazing sidelong at the faded dirty pictures on the wall. He even liked Engineer's fire, a small crowd beneath the desert sky with only a guitar and their voices to keep them company. Spy's haunt is far too civilized. The record player makes Sniper nervous, but the quiet is almost worse, so he picks through the collection. To his dismay, they're all French.

“Yes, you can put on a record,” Spy says, not looking up from whatever he's concocting.

“Wish you wouldn't bloody do that,” Sniper retorts, but isn't deterred. He selects one at random, a 78 by a man whose name he might have heard in passing. Delicately, he slides the disc out, places it on the turntable, switches the thing on, and sets the needle on the edge. There is a pop, a hiss, and then the music begins. Violins and a warbling voice singing about fuck all.

“Aznavour?” Spy seems surprised. The clinking stops. Spy turns around with two small glasses in his hands.

Sniper turns the volume down til it's nearly inaudible. “Don't know him from Adam, mate.”

“It doesn't matter.” Spy crosses back and hands Sniper the lighter-colored of the two drinks. “Since you did not specify, I made you a rusty nail. Before you object, it is a digestif. Drink it slowly.”

Sniper gives it a fair go. Sniffs, sips it. Not bad. Maybe it will dispel the discomfort clouding his mind, and he can put together a sentence without feeling like a stupid child scorned by an overbearing teacher.

Spy leaves no room for argument anyway and takes his own seat, setting a smaller glass of a dark but otherwise unidentifiable liqueur on a tiny side table. Then he finally takes out and lights a cigarette, inhales with evident pleasure, and blows a long, thin stream of smoke out the side of his mouth. Finally, he asks Sniper:

“Well? How did you meet?”

Sniper is taken aback. “You’re supposed to know all this stuff, aintcha?”

“I am asking you.” Spy takes another nonchalant drag.

Sniper relents. “Picked her up on the side of the road. She was hitchhiking.”

“She is itinerant, or running from something?”

“She told me she wanders. She paints murals. From around here, I think, but says her mum’s Mexican.”

Spy’s curiosity is piqued. “What does she look like?”

Sniper takes a big swig of his drink this time. He considers the question and finds his face burning, but is willing to answer. Nice tits, he thinks, remembering how she'd ridden him, but there's got to be a better way to say it. “Eh, on the slim side. I think she's twenty-five? Hair down to here.” He gestures at his jawline. “Freckles. Smiles like a dream. She’s got a big leather jacket. Likes wearing dresses, too.”

Spy taps the ash from his cigarette into a fluted glass ashtray. “Une vraie gamine, hein?”

“Not a clue.” Whatever a gameen is. "She's so. Dunno how to put it. Free. I feel a little lighter around her, maybe. Except she's even lighter than me." Sniper is entering uncharted territory, a place where his words feel uncertain. "She's just so..." Good? Beautiful? He hesitates.

Spy waves his smoking hand dismissively. “How long have you been seeing her?

"Only a couple weeks."

"You are meeting again?"

“Ayup.”

“And you are already in love?”

“Er…”

“Let me put it more clearly. Have you made love to her?”

She certainly did him. Sniper wishes he hadn't taken off his hat so he could dip the brim and cover his face in shame. He doesn't like how his body reacts.

“… I see. My intent was not to embarrass you. I forget sometimes that you are young.”

“Young? Eugh. Stupid, sure.”

“I only want to know where you stand with her.”

“She bloody well likes me.” Sniper thinks he may even like her back.

Spy swirls his liqueur in his glass again and asks, this time with what may even be a slight hint of trepidation, “Does she know about us?”

“Haven't told her a thing.”

Spy does a little well-that-makes-sense-considering nod. “You have gotten yourself into an odd position.”

“Yeah. Reckon I fucked up.”

“Sadly, I think you are correct. Your gamine, she does not belong in your life.” Spy stares into the middle distance as if he were remembering something. “If I might analyze you… You are both desperately lonely. You are a terminally taciturn bushman and, if what you are telling me is true, she may have her heart open to the world to a fault. Otherwise she would not have gone along with you.”

“You’re telling me the obvious.” Sniper doesn't need to be reminded that he is a weirdo, either.

“…You do not need help understanding her?”

“I know what she is. What she's about. She's a better person than I'll ever be.” Sniper knows, but cannot bring himself to say, that men tell themselves a lie about women being mysterious. It's only that they don't fucking look at them. It's absurd. If you want to know a person, it’s only right to fucking take a gander at them. “I only need to know how to end things.”

Spy puts his glass down and tents his fingers, still holding his cigarette in one and looks contemplative, in a mean kind of way. “This could be a problem.”

“So how do I do it? Do I cut her off, or…”

Spy raises an eyebrow. He almost looks amused. “Or?”

Has to drag it out of him. “One last night. A good one. And then I leave. Maybe I’ll make it…” How does he phrase this? He doesn’t talk about sex, much less with another man, so he abandons the phrase. “I won’t leave her cold.”

“If you truly care for her, I would choose this.” And then he becomes serious, almost somber, and utters: “Do not simply abandon her.” Sniper's confusion must be fully evident, because Spy snorts sharply. His version of a friendly laugh. “My colleague, life is already full of pain. You ought to know, causing so much of it. You and she will suffer regardless, so it is better to give as much pleasure as you can and then suffer honestly.”

“Don’t mean much coming from you,” Sniper says.

“I am advising you.” Spy points with his smoking hand. "I am a backstabber by trade, it is true, but you are not." Spy smirks, takes another drag, inhales with a prissy French inhale. The record spins. Aznawhoozit warbles softly in the spaces between words. “You know, I despise your tactics—I deal with your counterpart too much to like you, and I must assume you feel the same about me. However, you are my teammate. And you are usually quite good at your job. So I respect you enough to advise you. And also to keep this between us.” He says it like it’s an exception to a personal rule.

Sniper is somehow less at ease. “D’you spend your evenings thinking of ways to blackmail us?”

Spy smiles in such a way that makes Sniper wish he had not asked, then stubs out his cigarette.

Sniper goes against Spy’s advice and downs the rest of his drink in one gulp.