Chapter Text
When he heard stories about other people “like him”, it was always that they’d known since they were a baby. That they’d insisted right from the start. They recalled that everyone had seen “the signs”. Sniper hadn’t had any of that.
He’d been interested in hunting and nature and knives, but it was Australia. That was life. He even loved to draw and he spent hours knitting with his mother and when he made the effort to socialize, he gravitated towards girls. If he drove into town and hung around the art shop he would sometimes strike up a conversation with the woman at the cash register. She was real nice and would save things in the back for him if she thought he would like them.
All this and more and he’d never really questioned things. Everyone told him he was a girl, so sure. He was. The way he wore three layers in the heat and slouched into his rumpled vest and didn’t speak unless spoken to was just him being weird. He was weird about a lot of things. He stopped wondering about it.
Then things got.. Complicated.
One thing he hadn’t taken too long to figure out was that someone being a man or woman didn’t make much difference to his interest. He left the family farm without a backward glance. Once he started making connections (in more ways than one) he learned how to be discreet in his affairs. Both professionally (as a hired killer) and personally (as a bisexual hired killer).
Everything went fine for a while. He travelled, made a good amount of money, got to do something he was good at. And none of that horrible “social interaction” nonsense that seemed to come with so many other jobs. When he didn’t talk or tapped the table or rocked in his seat people assumed that’s just how he was, and either way knew better than to disparage someone who murdered for a living.
It got weird when he stopped off in San Francisco. Long story short, he had a few pleasing escapades and ended up falling in with the trans crowd in the area. He hadn’t really thought about if before, hadn’t realized it was an option . That he didn’t have to be a woman. That hating your body to the extent he did wasn’t actually all that “usual”.
He quietly contacted some people and got his hands on a good supply of testosterone. He had always dressed in “men’s clothes” so there wasn’t much to change except for finally getting around to throwing out those few dresses he’d kept because he could never really explain why he didn’t like them. Until now. He’d never gone by his first name anyway, so he could take as long as he wanted to choose a new name for himself. If he even wanted to. (He did. His relationship with his parents was tangled up and the thought of something they’d never touched and so his and defining him in such a way sent a guilty thrill up his spine.)
He’d always had a problem with stubble because of the Australium, and the T helped his body really kick things into shape. The only problem was his chest. He’d heard about surgeries for that kind of thing, but he wasn’t sure he trusted anyone enough for that step. Doctors can be a tricky thing when you’re a lone sniper for hire with a lot of enemies and not many medical connections.
For now, he lived with it. Switched his undershirt for one of those fancy compression shirts. Looked in the mirror. Perfect. He grinned. Everything was falling into place so well when he hadn’t even realized there was something to be fixed.
As he settled into the idea of himself as a man , his reputation lifted. He took more jobs, talked a little more, actually looked at people’s faces when they talked rather than staring at the table. (The sunglasses hid that he didn’t look anyone in the eyes, thank goodness.) He stood straighter, started to keep his arms at his sides when before he would’ve crossed them.
His rising reputation ended up being his downfall. He took a job he knew was risky but thought he could handle, fool that he was. It ended badly, of course. He woke up in a makeshift hospital room with his client nowhere in sight. He didn’t have time to regret all his life decisions one by one before he was offered a job from a young woman in a purple suit. He shrugged his good shoulder (the other was bandaged up after having a knife shoved into it during said bad ending) and signed on. Not like he had anything better to do.
So he got the job at Teufort. He met the team. They’re alright. He’s told about the respawn technology, and doesn’t really believe it, but after a couple weeks going through it time and time again you have to have some sort of trust in it to bring you back.
He kept to himself mainly, staying in his van off the base and not talking much. That was how he was though, so the team had better get used to it. It took a while but, but they did. The team eventually fell into a strong camaraderie. It would’ve been more difficult to stay unfriendly towards each other considering the conditions they’re under: getting killed together day in and day out tends to make for a begrudging trust if nothing else. Everyone settles in. They’re kind enough about his quirks (his autism , he hears in Spy’s voice in the back of his mind) and he makes an effort to be friendly.
One night they got to talking about their families. He headed back to his van once the conversation started to dwindle, and sits heavily on his bed. He hadn’t talked to his parents in ages. Not since he first left the farm. Well, maybe there’d been a couple phone calls so they knew he was still alive and to tell them not to worry about what they saw in the papers. But it had been a while.
He scratched at his stubble and he looked down at the nondescript box by his bed. Inside it lay his testosterone shots, shipped to him on the base now.
It had been a long while.