fic: Utmost Importance

[bonnefois]

Title: Utmost Importance
Series: TF2
Character/Pairing: Scout/Pauling, mentions of other characters
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2,159
Author's note: Part of Loving Ghosts. For Sarah.

1968



Miss Pauling looked over the rows of guns and ammo, when a voice broke the silence of the large sales room. He was the only person she knew save Saxton Hale himself who could, and would make sure that you heard him two rooms away. She looked up through the tables. She was used to sitting very still in the chair and waiting, waiting, waiting for Saxton to get back to her.

Something that would surely set her off kilter and make her late for everything, and get her in trouble with the Administrator, but Saxton Hale couldn't be bothered to keep a schedule.

Well, technically, he had a schedule. It was just that every single hour had punch wildlife penciled in.

Someone cleared their throat behind her.

"Hey, sales guy guy, I need some ammo, stat!" Scout cupped his hands about his mouth to make his voice carry further. His wrapped hands were spotted with red. She couldn't tell if it was blood, ketchup, or some kind of fruit punch. Knowing him, it could be any of the above.

He waited all of two seconds before leaning on the counter, and repeating even louder: "Hey, sales guy!"

As per usual, there was no salesman around, because Bidwell was keeping Saxton Hale from punching local animal life, or trying anyways. Bidwell's entire life was an exercise in failing to keep Saxton Hale from burning zoos down.

A mental image of Scout with a megaphone came to her. She cracked a smile at the thought of just how much damage Scout could do if he had one of those.

Scout looked at her, in a way no one else had. Miss Pauling had never really known anyone excited to meet her. She was the one delivering the word of the Administrator, and more often than not, the bullets. The most she got was wary politeness most of the time, if not outright hostility.

She blinked twice as he managed to close that distance in no time. His search for the 'sales guy' was immediately forgotten at the sight of her. Scout leaned against a shelf filled with ammo and weapons with almost excessive casualness.

The sleeves of his red shirt were rolled up to show more of his arms. He pushed his cap up, unable to stay still even for a moment.

"Oh, hey, I really am lucky today! I didn't expect to see you here, Miss P! Whatcha up to? Gettin' a gun? This place has some great ones, but there's never a sales guy. And I can't just take it. Or could I? Not like stealin', but like droppin' cash and sayin' if you want me to get that briefcase for another chase, I need my friggin' ammo. You feel me?"

He leaned in a little more. She was a bit surprised it didn't collapse. Maybe he was too light to tip it over, or maybe they'd reinforced the shelves after the kinds of carnage the various mercenaries and Saxton Hale had wrought on it over the years.

He tapped his finger between the bullets with each word he spoke. Sporadic and kenetic, and most of all--endless.

That was the most apt word for Scout. Endless.

"The same thing that you are. Well, not quite. I'm looking for a whetstone. My last one got...ahem, lost."

Her gaze fell on the map on the wall.

It was deep in the gulf of Mexico by now. Right with the last batch of bodies, and the knife. She'd had that knife since she was a child, and she'd fought off her first hitman. It wasn't like she had particular thoughts of luck or sentimentality, but it still felt weird to not have it with her.

Honestly, she was surprised the Administrator didn't have a shark tank. Or kept pigs. She could sell the manure, and Miss Pauling wouldn't have so many bodies to bury. It would be much more satisfying to just--push them in the tank, and then she could go off for tea. Or whatever people who actually had free time did.

But, that was the Administrator's choice and not hers. It wasn't her place to question the Administrator. In this land of sand, her word was law, an absolute reserved for gods and kings and queens of older days, when public executions were far more prevalent.

Scout cleared his throat. He bristled at that few seconds where a memory--and a map--had caught her attention.

In the back room, Saxton Hale laughed, as she heard a animalistic roar. Had he brought in a Lion to fight for lunch time? It wouldn't be the first time--or the last time, for that matter.

"The fuck was that?" Scout said.

Miss Pauling sighed. Leave it to Saxton Hale to cause a path of destruction wherever he was.

"He'll probably be there a while," she said.

"Jeez, why don't they hire some other sales guy? I mean, they got tons of money. It can't be that bad a job, right?"

Bad was an understatement.

"Well, they do. They have to keep being, um, fired."

Fired out of a cannon was more like it. The sales persons kept being too nosy and trying to blow the whistle on Saxton Hale's various frauds, shady business dealings and constant hunting of game without any sort of permit, whether it was legal or not.

Oh, and the part where he firebombed Woodstock. And the zoos, of course...

"Makes sense," Scout said. He glanced down at her hands, and concern filled his features. "Hey, what's with your fingers? What happened to them? You hurt?"

"What? That's--"

Before she could even finish, he reached out and wrapped her hands in his. Her cheeks turned rosy at the sudden touch. It was a surprise--usually if someone so much as brushed against her, she'd reach for her pistol.

Scout was lucky that she was too shocked at the warmth of his skin against hers to knee him in the chest. A reflexive move that even people like Engineer had gotten for saying howdy at the wrong moment, and startling her.

Sure, she was short, but she'd never thought of herself as delicate. She'd gotten used to not being touched. She hadn't exactly had a childhood full of being snuggled close and told she was a good girl. But the heat of his hands suddenly about her was...surprisingly nice. She didn't draw back. His hands completely enveloped hers, and were quite a bit larger than her own.

He shifted his fingers and surrounded her hands, which were lifted to the light. Her nail polish was purple--to hide the blood and dirt, mostly. The polish had cracked, but she hadn't the time to redo it.

But it was her fingertips that caught Scout's eye.

"What happened? Who did this to you? I'd friggin' kill 'em in a second. Just tell me," His voice was low, and full of--concern? Something else she couldn't quite identify. Something tender and what she craved deep inside.

"Oh, acid accident. Not fun. Wouldn't recommend it," she said.

"Acid, huh. Wish I'd been there to punch it."

"Um, heh, you'd just get hurt too."

"Yeah, but then we could both go to doc and get fixed up," Scout said calmly.

Way too calmly for someone talking about their skin being melted by acid.

"Oh, that wouldn't work."

Her very DNA had been changed into Respawn to keep it like this. Even if she died, she'd just come back with the same acid-stained fingers.

Scout tilted his head, like a puppy. "You mess up in science class or somethin'? There some teacher in New Mexico I gotta kill now?"

She lifted one brow at this. "...Science class?"

"I mean, you're real smart and stuff. You seem like the kind of girl who can read real good. In fact, you seem like the kind of girl who graduate high school and maybe even college."

"I...certainly know how to read, among many other things," Miss Pauling said. She cleared her throat. "It was a long time ago. It doesn't even hurt anymore. Much, anyways."

"Still...Ma would always kiss it better when I scraped my knees, or elbows, or got black eyes. Course, eventually I grew too old for it. My brothers would tease me, call me a mama's boy. They were just jealous."

That old friend, the familiar sadness filled her. She never had a mother who remembered her birthday or bandaged her wounds. Something that was so real to so many other people might as well have been a fantasy of purple unicorns to her.

"So, that'll help..."

"What...?"

She blushed harder as Scout brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed each fractured fingerprint. So burned by acid that her fingerprints would never land her in jail. Even though she'd lost so much feeling in her fingertips due to the many burned nerve endings and skin, she felt the softness and warmth of his lips there against her skin.

He wanted her to feel better. He was willing to kill to make her happy. She hadn't known many people in her life willing to go to such lengths for her.

"There, better? Maybe a little, at least. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Well, I didn't forget forget, but you been so busy I ain't been able to talk to you much. Missed you, you know."

You missed me?

He let go of her hands, only to pull something out of his bag. He handed a knife to her, handle first. It had a design of flowers all over the rather fancy handle.

"A knife?"

"Yeah, everybody needs a pocket knife! Plus, they mostly just sell weapons around here, so it was either that or an AK-47 with flowers on it. And I figured I'd save that for Smissmass. Anyways, sorry I missed your birthday. Although technically when it happened, I didn't even know you yet. But, hey, I could make up for all those birthdays I missed--how many I got to do?"

"Er, what? You're asking how many birthdays I've had in my life?"

He nodded enthusiastically.

"Twenty-four."

"Oh, you're older than me by a bit. That's hot--er, cool, real cool."

He was still talking, though Miss Pauling found herself distracted by the knife in her palms. It wouldn't be much use in a battle, given how small it was, but she still might find use for it. She closed her hands about it.

"Why do people give birthday presents? I've never really understood it. It seemed such a big deal for nothing."

"Because you're so happy they're alive. Well, sometimes you get forced to give it to some chucklefuck you can't stand because your ma wants to teach you manners. Good luck with that, ma." He laughed. "But, gifts to my family? My ma? I'd work real hard deliverin' papers because I wanted to have somethin' nice for her. Gotta let her know how much she means to me. ....You really never had anybody remember your birthday?"

She shook her head. "No, it wasn't..ahem, really that important."

Scout gave her an incredulous look.

"What the heck you mean it isn't important? It's important to me, you know. Oh, and you should always clean your knives with alcohol, not water. It stops the rust! My ma told me that. Oh, and one other person. Well, not quite a person. A French ghost that used to hang around. He moved on, though."

"...A French ghost?"

"Yup. Used to help me with multiplication. Actually, I still remember a lot of that crap, even if I dropped out cause I kept fightin' and blowin' up stuff in science class. But I still remember that one times one is one, and two times two is four."

She smiled softly. "No wonder you and Demo get along so well," she said.

"Yeah, he's great--"

The Administrator's voice echoed over the loudspeakers, and cut Scout's llikely hour long speech short.

The match will begin in ten minutes. Mercenaries, Assemble at your positions immediately.

"Guess it's Avengers Assemble time." Scout gave her a wry smile. "Watch me on the big screen, Miss P. I'll win this match, just for you."

"Hey--um... good luck," she called back after him.

He winked and blew her a kiss as he raced out the door. It set her cheeks alight again, and her heartbeat hammered in her chest, like a hitman had a gun to her head but...not dangerous, and not unpleasant. The same high, without the actual danger.

Or maybe another kind of danger.

"A gift to someone important to you..." she said.

She traced the flowers on the handle of her little knife over and over, as she headed out to help with the next game.