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When a man needs to mourn he is faced with a plethora of options on how to do so.
In Demoman’s opinion, the best place to express those manly tears was in front of a bad sitcom, washing the salt away with lots and lots of alcohol. If you could only pick either sitcom or the bottle, you went with the bottle and soaked up liquor until you were as wet as a sponge who thought it had two eyeballs instead of one. It whited out everything: unemployment, people who considered black Scotsmen tourists attractions and, yes, even dead fiancées.
The woes of lost love was something he could relate personally to. Once he’d met a hella sweet lass named Maura. He’d been drinking enough pines of ale since they stopped dating to repress everything about her into blurs and white noise. Almost everything; he could still recall that “buttercup” had become a mainstay in his vocabulary, and that on their last dinner she had exploded.
If he had reacted even the tiniest bit like Soldier after the man in question found out that Zhanna had kicked the bucket, it was probably for the best that Maura had been erased from his memory. The way that the Soldier went through his stages of grief was something extra, as could be expected from him. First he discarded all of his belongings — the entire cardboard box dumped into a river — then retreated into a cave to live out the rest of his life as a naked anchorite, only to rush outside forty minutes later and scream that he would build an American shrine in Zhanna’s honor, where he would place the ears, tongues and testicles of every person in the nearby town.
In Demoman's humble opinion he was the definition of a responsible citizen for convincing Soldier to drink until he passed out instead.
– Ye kneew it’s schtupid. Hole happy, marridge life aheed of ye. Duwn te draain”, Demoman said, three hours and a health-therapist’s-nightmare- number of drinks later.
After wiping away the foam that seeped down his chin, he reached out and patted his buddy on the back. Said buddy did not respond, having snored face down on the bardesk for the last twenty minutes. When he’d been sober enough to care about being presentable, Demoman had forced some boxers and one of his reserve sweaters onto him, but at some point — maybe last time he had needed to stumble to the bathroom — those clothes had disappeared, and that just seemed like the natural order of things now when he had more alcohol in his system.
– Juscht want ye tu kneew I’m ‘ight there whit ye. Still can’t believe meself ‘hat me old mum’s gone too tha big place in tha ski, he continued, patting Soldier a second time.
Sniffling, he leaned back in his barstool, ignoring the fact that it was tilting ominously, then anger as instant as the spark from flint and steel. He slammed the drained glass down with enough force to leave a crack along half of it. The rude container deserved nothing more for daring to be empty.
At the sound of the glass hitting polished wood, the bar's owner who had been cleaning the same bottle of booze for a few hours now, startled out of his passive state and poured more alcohol into the glass. A responsible bartender would have stopped the excessive drinking two liters ago, but he was in a generous mood. Also the bumper was laying in a puddle of his own blood. The owner grappled with the uncomfortable urge to glance toward the bloody handprint, where the man had tried to use the last of his strength to reach the phone on the wall. The alarm button beneath the bar table had to be broken, because he’d lost count on how many times he’d jammed it and the police still hadn’t showed up. He would have counted on some of the other customers calling the authorities; unfortunately all of his clientele had chosen to vacate the premises as soon as a black man with an eyepatch and what appeared to be a sword prop strapped to his back (It would turn out not to be a prop) barged in with another man bawling against his shoulder. Therefore they had been gone before — as kids put it — “Shit got real”.
Soldier let out a loud snore, which, no matter how crude a sound, was a balm to the ears compared to his earlier crying, comparable to a seagull screaming with a shovel shoved down its throat. Grumbling, the scot turned to him and repeated his words, clearly assuming that the sleeping man had simply failed to hear him the first time. His voice became progressively more mushed until he trailed off and he got an expression of groggy puzzlement on his face, muttering “What ‘has I scheying’?” to himself.
In the process of doing this he looked away from the unbelievably real claymore that he’d leaned against the bartable. The owner glanced at it. If he could grab it, would he be able to chase the men off, or would he find it too heavy to lift?
He never got a chance to take this risk, as a hand shot out and curled around the scabbard. Demoman looked up at him with one steady eye, piercingly sharp in a way a drunken man’s gaze should not be.
– Doon tooch ‘at. If ye want yu ‘ands in’act, he said.
The bar owner felt his bladder threaten to give way, and nodded.
– Ain’ in te mood tu act buddy with ye. Ich a hundred yeach tu late tu be buddy, he continued to mutter, lost interest in the owner and slung his arm around his companion instead.
– Jest want ye tu ‘ear, ‘hat I knuw ehak’ly huw yu fil..
A sob broke out of him. He scrubbed snot from his nose, then reached into his jackpocket. Probably fishing for a napkin, however the bartender could only think that he was about to pull out a knife or a gun.
At the moment the owner felt sure he would faint, he heard a familiar tingling bell from the entrance door. A man was standing on the welcome mat, tall and dressed in a red and definitely custom made suit. He almost eclipsed the light that shone in through the door. One look at what seemed like a skee mask covering his face, and all that the owner could think was: Thank God, they sent a swat team.
Spy swaggered into a bar the way that hygiene inspectors tended to do, head held high as if it was he who owned the establishment and not the actual owner. When he saw the two men collapsed across the bat table his upper lip curled in an aloof man’s expression of disgust.
– Please o … officer. My employee, the owner said and pointed toward the corner.
Spy glanced toward the crumpled body, then looked back at him with a suave smile and spoke with the most french accent that the bar owner had heard in a while.
– Sorry, I’m not with the police, though several of your neighbors have called them out of concern of the loud noises coming from here. I should know since we hijacked the emergency hotline.
The owner’s mouth fell open. With a waltzing step, every movement self assured, Spy walked across the room and leaned his elbow at the bar table, far away from the spot where the two other visitors had slobbered the wood with alcohol and tears. For a moment the owner became convinced that he would hear the line “Dry martini. Shaken not stirred” next.
– I am a work acquaintance of these men you see, Spy said instead, in an organisation of quite rumbustious nature. We all should be on a secret assignment right now. Our employer isn’t happy that the two of them have scurried off to a random town.
The man reached out toward the bottle that the owner had been endlessly wiping, took it and turned it around.
– You must wonder why I’m telling you this classified information, he continued while studying the label. Quite simple, since we don’t know what these idiots might have blabbered to you in their states, we are already assuming that you know too much — 1967, Tequila … not a terrible loss.
He grabbed the flask by the neck and smashed it against the owner's head. Glittering glass pieces rattled to the ground, followed by the heavy “thump” of a limp body. Leaning across the counter to get a good look, Spy gave a pleased hum at the result, then proceeded to nudge at Demoman who had dozed off. He spat upright like a spring and swung a fist toward the other who calmly stepped out of reach. At this point the barstol gave up and tipped, sending its occupant crashing down on the floor.
– Ow, bluudy hel’ Spie!
Not bothering to look down, Spy stepped over him and reached out to Soldier. Due to a lack of a collar to touch him through, Spy, grimacing in disgust, snaked his fingers beneath the helmet that hung low on Soldier’s head, then gripped him by the hair and hefted said head upward, making his drooling face visible.
– Was the bar your idea? he asked Demoman.
– Dun’t gi’ mi thaaht. Witohut me hee wuld have cut te balls of ev’ry man u woman in te city … then ye get to see … te adminisrra’or es angry?
– Not the administrator. We don’t work for her anymore. Remember?
– Ach, yesch.
Demoman scratched his stubby cheek.
– ‘Wo ‘ere we working for ag’n?
– You will get the chance to relearn that after you help me carry this lug, Spy said while walking over to the bouncer and crouching down to remove his jacket, because he would not lug Soldier out of the city without at least a makeshift kilt over his liberated private parts.
Sure, the corpse wore a pair of perfectly functioning trousers that he could wrestle off, but, as most professional killers, he was well aware of what people did in their pants when they died. Turning around he found Demoman sitting up, but otherwise doing nothing.
– Don’t try pretending that you are too drunk to walk; we all know that never happens, Spy scowled.
– Yer a slavdrivher Spie, Demoman said, and decided that if the way over to the man hadn’t felt so long he would be breaking his neck.
– Don’t forget the sword. You can use it as a walking stick, Spy responded, giving the sheathed claymore a kick as he went past it.
It toppled toward Demoman, who caught it at the last second, letting out a stream of mushed together curses Spy’s way. The sword itself was glowing green, the ghost haunting it visibly declaring its displeasure. Its dour shine grew into an outraged lime when the Demoman actually took Spy’s advice and braced himself on it to swayingely regain his footing.
– Now, help me with this, Spy said.
Having finished tying the jacket in the form of a makeshift diaper around the soldier’s waist, he brusquely pulled him down from his chair with a grip on both wrists, nodding to Demoman to take the ankles.
– Ain’t doeeng ye … werk … for ye yu … Demoman muttered, turned his back to Spy and stumbled toward the bar door.
– … Ich that heavuun wer guing to over tere? he said at the sunlight shining in through the entrance, getting violently teary eyed. Mi mum’s at taat final gud place, ye knuw.
Spy gave a loud sigh, looking at Demoman’s back as if visualising all kinds of sharp utensils sticking out of it. Since the man he’d come to fetch at least walked in the right direction, he decided that he could, this once, let the insubordinate act go. Dragging Soldier after him, he followed Demoman outside. Left in the bar after Demoman’s and Soldier’s consolation visit were only the bodies of its victims.