Chapter Text
"where'd all the time go?"
This was a question Scout asked himself frequently. A young and fresh-faced mercenary, renowned for his bubbly personality, albeit grating at times. Despite the egotistical nature he presented his colleagues with, Scout, inherently was very reflective when he had time to himself. It was not uncommon for him to hole himself up somewhere and think. What he thought about most... Was his mother. He'd always felt an unmatched closeness to his mother, mostly because he'd matured without a father. Perhaps matured is not the right wording, as to most, Scout was (at least in their eyes) naïve and childish, some may even go as far as to call him reckless. His sharp tongue and short attention span had proven to be detrimental to the team in more ways than one. Often times resulting in the young man becoming the damsel in distress rather than the fearless hero he made himself out to be. Several run-ins with angry wizards, dangerous amalgamations of bread pumped full of tumours and the like made Scout look like a fool that couldn't keep himself out of trouble. But in his defence, most of these encounters had been situational. How was he supposed to know Soldier had been panic-teleporting bread for 3 days? Furthermore, how on earth was Scout supposed to know the adverse effects of teleporting bread such as the creation of yeasty eldritch horrors? This information wasn't exactly easily obtainable, but still whenever something went wrong it was usually pinned on Scout, as he appeared to be the catalyst for most of the disasters within the RED base.
During these periods of thought, Jeremy took with him a pad of paper and a pencil on which he would scribble down nonsense in his large, barely legible handwriting. Most of the paper would be used to scrawl long, drawn out letters for his mother, detailing the young man's adventures in the mercenary business. More often than not these stories of Scout's valour were greatly exaggerated, tailored so that his mother would receive not even the slightest notion that her son had been in any danger, let alone blown up, dismembered, impaled, so on and so forth.
Rain or shine he'd find somewhere quiet to reflect and scrawl everything festering within him, so it was out in the open. He enjoyed sitting flat against the wall in the intelligence room most, the wall was cool, as was the floor, and it was very rare any of the other mercs would stray that far into the back of base, with the exception of Spy; who made his rounds once every two hours or so, checking that the intelligence was in-fact still there. This, and the beeping of the monitors was the only downside to writing in that particular room, as Jeremy always felt observed, like someone was peering over his shoulder, reading all of his best kept secrets. But it wasn't always difficult to tell when Spy was approaching, his shoes made a dreadfully annoying clack against both the linoleum and metal floorings in that part of the base.
Scout wasparticularly fond of illustrating as opposed to writing, as even he knew hewasn't the most astute author; growing up surrounded by older boys allowedScout to realise that illustration was the easiest way for him to articulatehis feelings. Crying to his mother was seen as a weakness, a flaw that he wasexpected to grow out of, to shed like a cocoon and to blossom from within it, alarge, strong, unbelievably manly butterfly. Drawing seemed to be the bestcourse of action in expressing his feelings. As, if he simply drew how he feltand didn't adorn the scribblings with captions or text, they only resonatedwith him, unless of course, one of his colleagues were to find them and givethem a deeper meaning that was pertinent to them. This was highly unlikely, aswithout any text these drawings were completely nonsensical: countlesslandscapes with no particular country of origin, faces they'd never seen,blueprints for weapons that -at least to their knowledge- did not exist. Drawing his emotions, was Scout's safest way of keeping them hidden. Without bottling them up inside.
On this particular day, Scout had cozied himself up in the corner of a large wooden tower, usually reserved for Sniper when battle was in full swing. At first, he was apprehensive to remain in the tower because of the way the old wooden ladder groaned in protest each time he put his weight onto a rung; however, a positive to the tower only really being accessible to the lighter among them meant the heavier mercenaries like Soldier, Pyro, or even Heavy himself most likely wouldn't survive the climb up to bother him.
The isolation felt nice.
Scout wondered if this is how Sniper felt all the time. Quiet. Peace. Connection with himself and no one else. Scout enjoyed it regardless of Sniper's feelings on it. Even the loudest of us need periods of self-reflection.
He had taken advantage of the weekend ceasefire to bask in the warm New Mexico sun that glared down onto the RED base, bleaching its sign an uncomfortable shade of pink. Scout found this curious, as the sign hadn't been up for too long, but he elected to ignore it. Pink, in Scout's eyes, was just another colour, he couldn't quite grasp what the big whoop was over it, Tom Jones wore pink once, and he's like, the manliest man ever! Sheltered within his tower, Scout relished in the warmth, the dry heat a welcome change to the humid summers he was met with in Boston. Today-he decided- he was going to write. Not to his mother, or to Tom Jones (from whom he had yet to receive a reply), or to Miss Pauling, but to himself. After having so many brushes with death in days past, he realised he hadn't told a soul about his upbringing. Or rather, nobody listened.
So, pencil in hand, Scout began to write...