Tensions had been building for weeks- Spy had announced his biological relation to Scout, not just to the runner, but to the entire team in one go, which the mercs could only assume was a tactic to humiliate Scout and keep his advantage over the situation- and it seemed to work. Once the youngest merc realized Spy wasn’t kidding, he’d been furious, inventing new ways to cuss his father out when he ran out of the long list of existing ones. He’d berated Spy more for his mother’s sake than his own, but when Spy revealed he was still seeing the woman, Scout’s anger fell to complete dismay. Both his parents had been going behind his back since he was born, just to keep him out of the loop. All because Spy didn’t want him, and he never did- and his mother put Spy over her own son every waking moment since. He was devastated, and everyone knew it, considering Spy couldn’t even give him the courtesy of keeping their family matters private. His mother was the most important person in his life, and it wasn’t even close- as far as the runner was concerned, he had nothing left. A thundercloud had been hanging over his head ever since.

It came to a head right before a match. All the mercs had piled into the locker room to prepare, only to find Scout and Spy in another heated argument. Neither merc was typically on time to the locker room, much less early, and seeing Scout flying off the handle was unexpected for once- he’d been quiet and hard to talk to since the incident. Ripping Spy to shreds verbally was the most they’d heard from him in the weeks between combined. Their teammates were silent, frozen in their tracks as they watched the two shout back and forth.

“I am nothing like you, moron,” Scout seethed, jabbing Spy in the chest with a bandaged finger. “You don’t ever get to say that, you hear me?”

Spy scoffed, shoving him away. “No, you aren’t. The stealthiest, smartest, most powerful mercenary on this team versus the most obnoxious, useless, noisy, loudmouthed brat in the country? I think not.”

Several mercs grumbled their disagreement at the ‘smartest’ and ‘most powerful’ bits, but if Scout or Spy had even noticed them walk in at all, they didn’t show it. Scout’s fists balled at his sides as he glared daggers at his father. “You want quiet, old man?”

“Please. If I never hear another word out of you, it would be too soon.”

Scout only gritted his teeth before the match began.

And God knows he followed through.

He was like a ghost on the battlefield that day. He sprinted out of sight the second the gates opened, and none of the mercs saw much more of their teammate than the flash of a blue shirt disappearing around a corner, or the nearly silent tapping of his sneakers passing behind them, only for them to turn around and find nothing.

Well, not nothing. Bodies followed in Scout’s wake like they never had before.

The match was over scarily fast- Scout had retrieved the enemy intelligence a whopping three times, and the mercs left the match winded more with whiplash than anything. Scout wasn’t even in the locker room to clean up, and the only evidence they had that he’d left the battlefield at all were his leftovers and a can of soda disappearing from the fridge in the middle of the night.

They made it three days seeing only traces of the runner before everyone freaked out entirely. Medic was worried sick about the boy, considering he didn’t have the chance to check him over after the last three matches, and he hadn’t gone through respawn once. Whatever injuries he’d collected since were going untreated. Pyro was at their wits end without their best friend, Engie was a wrong look away from killing Spy for starting this, and everyone else was just visibly unsettled by the shift in energy within the team. They assumed Scout had been hiding away in his room to prove his point, but when Heavy broke the door down, they found nothing. The lights were off, the bed was made. Scout’s shoes, weapons and wallet were gone. He’d been a ghost on the battlefield, but he wasn’t even haunting the base at all.

The only reason the BLU team wasn’t steadily building a losing streak was Scout’s invisible presence on the field. Thankfully they’d been given a lot of intelligence missions- the runner’s strong suit- and he kept carrying them to victory. The other mercs were neglecting their jobs trying to hunt their own teammate for answers instead of fighting their own team.

Scout wasn’t invincible, though. Sometimes he ran out of places to run, got cornered by one of his friends. Sometimes Sniper was able to pin him to the wall and see the hollow distance behind his pale blue eyes. Sometimes Soldier was able to tackle him after a rocket jump and see his wide-eyed stare. Like they were strangers, or on the enemy team. Like they were the hunting foxes, and he was a rabbit with a killstreak.

Scout never said anything. He’d take their shock to his advantage, punch with the tips of his fingers, sharp and explosive between the ribs or in the hollow of the throat, and then he was gone.

They knew it was bad when Spy started caring. He’d never admit it, and he’d certainly never apologize or admit defeat, but he’d been trying to lure Scout out more than any of them. He’d disguise himself as a RED, make himself an easy target, but his son never took the bait. He’d burned Scout’s comic collection in the driveway, which looked like he was just trying to start another fight, but getting punched in the face by Scout would mean seeing him at all.

The message went unsaid. ‘You proved your point. You win. Come back.’

It wasn’t good enough.

They drove Scout even further away by accident. Pyro slept in his bed, Heavy and Soldier took turns keeping watch on the front porch. Medic and Pauling pestered the Administrator for any paper trail evidence of him. Demo and Engie cooked the most often and would always leave a full plate on an open windowsill as if Scout were a stray cat, but were hard pressed to leave the window themselves, watching, waiting for the boy to follow the smell of home. Sniper almost never left his nest, towering over the base, watching for any sign of the runner down the length of his scope. They’d even get to matches an hour early, patrolling the border of the arena, trying to catch Scout on his way to the fight. What they wound up doing, instead, was cutting off Scout’s ways in- to the base, to the arenas, to his room. So he stopped turning up.

If they saw only traces before, they saw nothing now, and it was their fault.

Blutarch and the Administrator were furious when Scout stopped showing up to work, but that meant they were a little more interested in helping the BLU team find him. They got Mondays, Fridays, and all weekends off to start searching for him, and everyone jumped on the opportunity. Missing posters cropped up around Teufort, attached to every shop window and telephone pole like climbing vines. Pauling got in touch with Scout’s mother and brothers, and somehow avoided explaining the situation while also learning that they hadn’t seen the runner anywhere. Sniper’s van was cranking up its mileage running laps around the desert surrounding Teufort- usually in the company of Soldier or Pyro, Sniper would patrol the dunes and canyons, looking for any trace of life. They found a lot more than they were expecting- Scout’s shoes to the north, his jacket to the west, cans of his favorite soda scattered somewhere in between. They were too carefully placed to be an accident, and Sniper couldn’t help but think it was a message. Scout was leaving his things behind, leaving his life behind. They even found his wallet, with his ID, all of his cards, and a group photo of the team with his own face carved out with a cigarette burn. It was deliberate.

They couldn’t search forever, not if Scout didn’t want to be found.

There wasn’t much to do months down the line. They stopped looking, and started fighting harder to make up for Scout’s absence. They’d all go home more battered, more bruised, and they hadn’t won an intelligence run since. The Administrator tried to hire new Scouts- bright-eyed young mercs with unfamiliar faces, quick on their feet, never quick enough. If the constant dying didn’t send them away within the first week, the unwelcoming attitudes of every merc left would. They weren’t trying to be cruel, but… they didn’t want a new Scout. They wanted theirs.

Medic and Pyro didn’t talk about what they did in the dead of night.

Medic would build supply crates- canned food, med packs, ammo that would suit the gun that Scout had last. Clothes, shoes, toothbrushes with stern notes attached. More than half of each crate would be made up of cans of purified water, and they were undoubtedly heavy when Pyro took them outside, but the firebug never complained. They’d drag the wooden crates miles out- Medic didn’t ask where- and come home just as the sun rose. They’d wait a few days before Pyro went back out to check on the spot.

Usually they’d come back, empty-handed all the same. On their lucky days, they’d return with an opened crate missing supplies. The water would be gone completely, along with most or all of the food. Sometimes the med packs would be gone, which Medic tried not to panic about. The ammo disappeared for a while, but hadn’t been touched since the first few crates, which led them to assume that Scout’s gun had been lost or discarded. Medic would pack the crate with more weapons, but he wasn’t inclined to arm anyone random who’d happen upon it.

They would know Scout had been there by the bare, tip-toed footprints in the sand. They’d only last a few feet before vanishing- he knew how to cover his tracks, but chose to leave them a sign. He always walked like that when he wasn’t wearing shoes. He never took the shoes in the crate, either.

The last crate was still out in the canyon, had been for weeks. Pyro moved it around a few times, but it remained untouched. Even the smallest trace of Scout had vanished into the wind.

There was an ancient legend in the deserts of New Mexico. The ghost of an outlaw was cursed to wander the dunes forever, followed by dust clouds and thunderstorms like a pack of dogs. Nobody ever saw him coming, but the raging storm was a sign that he was already gone again.

Sometimes the Respawn Machine sang Scout’s name. All that came back was a handful of sand.

Maybe he really was dead.

Years had passed by the time Demo wound up in that bar- the run-down one at the very far end of Teufort, an old relic in a dying town. The first year had threatened to tear the team apart completely, but the following ones put them back together again. When they finally stopped searching, and helped each other start grieving, they managed to turn back into a family. Nobody ever forgave Spy, and probably never would, but he seemed to know it. There wasn’t anything they could do to make him feel worse than he already did, so they stopped trying- they didn’t want to lose another teammate, not even him. They became better friends, better fighters, a better family to make up for what Scout had given them before. For what they had taken for granted.

They wouldn’t ever be the same again. It was always going to hurt, but maybe they wanted it to. The last trace of Scout they’d ever get was the pain, and they’d make it last forever if they could. But it became quieter, putting itself to bed, growing from a sharp stab to a dull ache. A familiar bruise. Nothing that a good drink couldn’t make Demo nearly forget. Never healed, but as close as it would ever get.

Though Demo was pretty sure he ripped a stitch in it when he heard the saloon doors swing open behind him.

He didn’t have to turn around. The doors squeaked, but the footsteps were silent. The only sign of life was the smell of dust and foreboding rain.

He didn’t look over when the stool next to him was taken. Nobody ever saw the outlaw, and he was terrified that a single look would make him disappear again.

“What’s the matter, cyclops?” said the outlaw.

Demo’s knuckles trembled around his glass, tears pricking in his eyes. That voice- the only thing he’d ever wanted to hear again. He couldn’t help his wandering eyes, crawling across the bar counter like a frightened mouse. Across a tanned hand, up a scarred arm. He was hard to look at, blurred like a corrupted video tape the further up he looked, until the outlaw’s head was completely shapeless, distorting the air around him like a living fog. Streaks of bright blue eyes made Demo’s breath catch in his throat.