#taytay464788

[purple-compromise]

[A fun BLU Specialist-centric fic submitted by @taytay4674788 Thank you so, so much for sharing this!! 💜]

Yeah this took a while between tumblr being weird with glitches and going back and forth with support on unresolved issues since October. But I think I found a temporary way to submit stuff to you at least at the moment ( at least 8 pages of fic in google docs).

I originally wanted to do a double take moment via a dream but it didn’t make much sense to do so with red spesh(and that’s going to be with a different character instead ;) )… So I ended up doing an eight page half character study half second half story with Blu spesh instead, as I enjoy making characters suffer having them question their own morals! It might be Ooc for both blu med(to be fair blu med would likely relish in torture in you wronged him or to send a message, especially if it’s from the enemy team) and blu spesh but I’d love to hear thoughts anyway since it’s been nearly a solid year since my last actual fic, on top of the fact that this is my first reader fic and first time writing the mercs. There is a part one to this fic, I just held it off since I had better flow with this one and I’m still trying to figure out dialogue, characterization and a few other details so the period of time is intentionally vague so it can act as a stand alone.All I know is that it takes place after chapter 31 in TIWWAN, and this is on the in-game Badlands control point map, not Teufort, not the overall arching map of The Badlands.

Very important distinction.

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You aren’t a bad person for taking this job. You knew that you’d get money,good money. Highest pay rate than anywhere in this backwater wasteland to send back home and still have enough to indulge into cigarettes daily from the dinky corner store in town.

So should it disturb you as much as it really should?

You kill each other out on the field every day, with most of the time the Red bastards push through to capture a point. So really it should be an equal retribution in all things considered. She kills you, you kill her. It’s all equal in the circle of life in a private war funded by cash that even the IRS wouldn’t shy an eye away from collecting all of it if it weren’t for Miss Pauling. You may have been the family disappointment to drop out of college, but you’re sure as hell that you’re not letting your sister do so. She has viable dreams to chase, well you, just need a little more time to figure it out.

Flicking open the nice red and white packaging of your care unit of cigarettes into your crisp uniform pocket of your assigned blue uniform, hair neatly tucked and out of the way. Counting under your breath the fresh cigarettes left in your case; you’ll be going to town this weekend to get some more. You’ve been saving the ones Spy has acquired for you, towards .. a later occasion, for when it really matters. For now, the ones from the corner store are going to suffice, even if it just tastes like chemically processed tobacco.

Your boots, a bit dusty from today’s scrimmage against those Red team bastards, click gently against the quiet blue dirt stained concrete. Making your way out through the hall passing cold steel to have a quiet smoke, the hum of electricity droning a bit too loudly in your ears for your taste. Maybe staring up at the stars for a bit if it isn’t cloudy again tonight. Sometimes it brings peace when you can’t listen to rerun broadcasts of Earplay on the radio that Engineer built for your team, that is when you could get more than the two stations Tuefort has and.. When you’re in the mood.. For that sort of.. Media. Yet, it’s a bit of romance and entertainment you needed while waiting for The Firesign Theatre to release their latest album of dramas.

Art keeps you human, on a fragile equilibrium from diving into the pure insanity that is your team. Being paid to kill humans, who well, keep reviving through technology that most would strive to get their hands on to achieve immortality. It can be a nasty sentiment that you don’t like to think about when it crawls up. How humans with bonds can and will destroy each other over the smallest discrepancies out of greed.

The uncanny valley isn't a physical place, only one of the mind. Diving straight into your soul. To unsettle yourself from the basic facts of life.. At least.. As you know them.

Does it unsettle you, walking past the infirmary in the evening, peeking through the infirmary double doors carelessly left open as if it was an actual medical emergency. It probably would’ve been, if the ones screaming bloody murder weren’t .. feminine screams, ones that match your own after taking a buckshot to the back. To witness a struggle between your team's medic and a visage of yourself trying to fend back clearly being overpowered from experimental medicine. Her blood, iron instead of standard antiseptic, attacking your senses. Nearly being able to taste it despite it being scattered on the floor and not on your hands this time. A mess against the contrast of the lack of life in the sterile halls collecting dust and oil. Fluorescent lights screaming out with a buzz with an underlying static tone against your heart rate. One needle that you can tell, already sticking out from her dominant arm, it’s different from the standard syringes your medic uses while in battle. Then again he’s mentioned offhand about a crossbow type weapon that he’s been gloating in development as of late, at least whenever you had an issue that a cigarette couldn't solve. His blue scheme of a lab coat is disrupted by large splotches of crimson soaking into the material on his shoulder, while she is struggling to keep awake. Grimacing on her face definitely indicates that something more than–

“Fräulein!-”

The loud slamming of metal trays holding medical instruments against the concrete floor in an escape attempt off the gurney forces you to jump back in a bit of pain and out of sightline. The sudden loudness to look away from the sight, forcing you out of your thoughts to cower, covering your ears. Gunshots are one thing, metal on concrete is probably worse. Oh definitely you’re going to get her on the battlefield for that one.

For only a moment that you consider that maybe he has one shred of decency in him. He rarely, if never takes a charity case on the field, especially for the enemy team. Perhaps that there’s actually a moral compass in there somewhere; trying to maybe preserve her life from whatever injuries—

Smack!

The sickening short sound echoing out of the infirmary reverberates against your heart. Shouts of insulting degradation, an unnatural sounding crack resulting in a sharp feminine cry of pain shortly following his remarks. Something you aren’t accustomed to outside of combat, especially not coming from yourself.

A quiet sigh further reinforces your gut judgment of character into actual fact of life about your medic. Not surprising in the slightest. Blue is not a calming color on this team, regardless of what literary analysis says.

Glancing back in as your team’s medic degrades your red counterpart, her coat’s thrown across the floor soaking up drying blood. No sign of visible weaponry as far as you could tell between the scuffling. You don’t know a lick of German, and don’t care to learn, but his expression reads of one who clearly has the upper hand in this fight as far as you can tell. His weight shifts quickly to keep her pinned down with one arm as she still flails to get him off. She is rightfully terrified, attempting to calculate another escape route struggling against the gurney, not seeing a needle sedative of some sort ready to inject into her flesh; hiding behind his back presumably grabbing from one of the smaller trays not immediately by the gurney. Only for your counterpart to use any means of what’s left functioning to get away from him, grasping at the restraints to undo them one handedly. Really the only time you could sympathize with her. If you could help her, you would. Her death is on the battlefield, not one on one with your medic who breaks femurs for amusement. As of now, you can only offer pity.

He’s absolutely playing god for his own benefit, and dialing it up beyond 10. Evidently in the vindictive smile he wears as his blue gloved hand wrapped around her throat. Relishing in her distorted chokes, her body still convulsing to fight his grip. Probably leaving a bruise if she doesn’t get sent through respawn first. Her distress is that his other hand is probably touching open wounds, likely in retaliation of some sort.

It’s something you’ve known all along, nor does it surprise you by any means. However, a human trained in pharmaceuticals to lose their shit on a patient who’s at a current physical disadvantage.. And torturing them in a way to send a message, seeking vengeance outside of the battlefield, leaves a distaste in your mouth.

It furthers your questioning of how your own medic sees you. You already knew that he sees you as a sack of organs waiting to be mixed and matched into a chimera abomination. A chill courses down into your spine in a pale realization.

Who’s to stop him from treating you the same way he does her? A paycheck?

You need a cigarette.

You don’t think that you’re a bad person, the medic on your team would absolutely flip your organs around like a 1,000 piece puzzle, pushing the limit of functioning. Interfering with his latest vanity project of immortality, is not worth being under the knife instead of your counterpart. That’s a fight between him and his counterpart for data, not you to be a martyr for someone who knew what she signed up for. Shrieks and swears threaten to distract you from your internal justifications once again.

It hits you, she’s been able to beat you down on the field before and has most definitely sent you straight back to respawn before. She should be able to defeat this man single handedly by all things considered in terms of adrenaline strength, you think. Briefly glossing over that Engineer had stayed back to test out a prototype of a sentry model and a few other machines outside. Mentioned it back at dinner a couple nights back about improving positioning and range, recalling that conversation in your mind. But even then, a normal sentry hasn’t completely taken her down with her shield without an übercharge, it at least hasn’t with your own shield by any means when you’re paying attention and not getting shot at from their loudmouth Scout. For now, you stare back to the corkboard filled with notes neatly laying on beige and blue paint on the walls. Looking for a rationalized answer, as if the corkboard of past events and reminders would just give it to you.

Memory flickers back from earlier before shift, Medic mentioning about a crossbow weapon in development. Something about needing a longer range, in order to focus on building über to take out the Red team, truly you have a tendency to tune out the bastard most of the time. Really it wouldn’t surprise you if it was really an excuse for him to just build über with Heavy. He’d probably stick that Medigun of his right up Heavy's ass if he physically could with how he doesn’t heal much of anyone else on his own team, except at the beginning of the match. Your eyes slowly search back into the blast of fluorescents, she still wriggling under his touch, an animal trying to gnaw off its leg caught in a trap to escape.

She probably would’ve struck equal if the ever increasing mass of needles, at least one that you’re guessing is a numbing agent, weren't stuck in her dominant arm. Only one of them you recognize from surgery, the others just look indistinguishable from his syringe gun but its size forces you to swallow down spit in your dry throat. Her fingers are trying to feel for something as the metal doesn’t feel crisp, spitting at your medic in disgust. Mentioning something about adjusting the contents of whatever he shot her with, the nut case being overwhelmingly gleeful about it too. Her, while you give her credit for being a fighter, slowly keeps searching to leverage against. Anything to try and gain an advantage.

Her eyes, realizing you are still staring into a macabre mirror of horror, locking into yours, silently pleading to you for a swift death. Something to get out of his hands. The air drops into a cold you haven’t felt in sometime, as all you could do was stare back at her. Reaching out if her closest arm wasn’t restrained down against the gurney, minimally in spirit. At least for a moment, before a natural response averts the moment into one of resistance from instruments of surgery to shredding flesh.

Is it wrong to outright deny mercy in a power imbalance to your enemy who is clearly begging for it?

Would she grant that same mercy to you?

The flashes of her pleading for death on a doctor's gurney in your mind, processing the unnaturality of it. Not that you fight her everyday over god knows what, or that she’s in surgery, the contrast of red outside the battlefield is supposed to be the remnants of blood medic should be cleaning up. Not dissecting a patient from the enemy team after hours.

For you to imagine intervening and putting a bullet between her eyes out of mercy has a different moment of surrealism. Yes you’ve insulted, spat on, kicked, trampled over her corpse, and probably broke her nose with more force than necessary more than a few times during work hours.. you.. easily forget when indulging in victory when the final bell rings at 3pm.. just not 7:38 in the evening, looking at a reflection where a mirror isn’t supposed to be.

You really need a cigarette.

Peeling yourself away from the sights and sounds of yourself, jittery hands reach for a lighter in the opposing pocket. Deliberately ignoring the drying blood on the floors trailing through the halls, that you noticed taking a second glance. The scent of iron you didn’t create slowly leaves your senses. Forcing the chilling screams fading back into echoes once again. Letting your body go on autopilot towards a quieter spot towards the exit door as the sounds of the infirmary become mere echoes. To the sound of comforting footsteps at this moment in time. Flipping the lip of the white and red box to reach for the safe constant of tobacco.

The Badlands despite being a natural wasteland spanning several acres.. Does have its own natural beauty when not roasting alive underneath the harsh sun of the New Mexico desert. Really the moments of transition between night and day are poetic in their own right. A production ending with a curtain call each day, skipping over the rehearsal and casting call; Straight on to the show for the next morning. A repetitive show that doesn’t truly conclude.

Click, click, click

The cold lighter shakes slightly as you try to focus on just having a quiet smoke. Your thumb brushes over the smoothness of the lighter as you close it with a solid click. Trying to wipe away.. whatever the hell you’d encountered back there.

Inhaling spicy warm tobacco gives you comfort from the thoughts and guilt of your mind. A walk, your brain drifts, is what you need. Exhaling out a puff of gray smoke, admiring the sun slowly setting into the evening sky. The cirrus clouds clawing through the sky breaking the gradient of the evening, layering clouds upon itself as your shadows trails further behind you. The dirt and sand kicking up under your boots, heels dragging along creating a path in the quiet desert, straying away from base the nightlife slowly waking up to their circadian rhythm against the machine guns and soaking of the day’s bloody rain.

Your peace.. is disrupted from the following of loud curses in German, maybe a different dialect but you can’t quite tell if it’s the echo.. And distinct, American English echoing through the landscape. Which is to be expected, after all, she’s patient zero for an upgrade in immortality that’s what you could gather from the medical record from your first intelligence grab. A big game of capture the flag, really.

With a syringe gun and shotgun pointed out barreling towards you, you throw your hands up that’s normally reserved for a bitter defeat. Yes, your Commander is at the ready if their idiotic Soldier starts blasting at you for existing in blue; but if the fight is unpaid it’s not worth your time. Your Soldier may berate you for insubordination or some shit, and the worst side of the spectrum is that Medic might schedule a sudden examination of your internal organs. Getting sent through respawn after hours isn’t worth buying time for someone you loathe to be around. Besides, as long as your Red counterpart doesn’t screw up by doing something incredibly stupid, you’ve got free room and board. A class on both sides or none at all, right?

You roll your eyes as their incredibly loud Soldier, starts barking orders and pumps his shotgun, presumably to aim at your chest. Incessant arguing increasingly becomes irritating to the disagreement you’re not even a part of. At least their medic has enough of a brain to identify a peace offering when he sees one.

Their Medic dressed in red narrows his brows in suspicion. Granted from his irritation, he himself has slathers of blood covering his lab coat, the dust decorating him in an offset of brown glitter. Working on who, well with an enormously large figure hauling a large glintering silver barrel at his side just pacing further behind from the duo here? Well it doesn’t take a ton of context clues to figure it out.

“It’s too much of a lovely evening to be standing out here in the desert. Might want to check out the infirmary for sunburns. The desert is harsh on skin after all.”

Pulling the cigarette out of your mouth for a moment to flick the glowing embers to the dusty earth, the dry smoke blowing from your lips. Their medic, placing themselves a bit more forward probably to keep their soldier from shooting you into swiss cheese. The desert sands carrying your voice out further towards the enemies who shoot you up on a daily basis, a sigh escaping from your lungs,

“ Fellas! I didn’t sign up for unpaid overtime, you don’t exist to me after that final point is captured at 3pm.”

Your eyes connect to try and read their next move, syringe and shotguns still not fully lowered. Obvious distrust, needing more information that clearly isn’t a trap into an ambush. Or a spy posing as you from your own team. After all, you’d hope at least some of your teammates would hold you to have a similar weight of importance in their eyes if Red ever decides to pluck you in retaliation from this event.

You nudge your head slightly towards base, as a directional guide. A puff of smoke exhaling out from your mouth, blocking the view of two visibly stern faces of your sights.

“Mighty shame that our Engineer hasn’t been able to fix our defective emergency exit alarms near our second point, yet..” A specific piece of information needed to earn trust, I mean your Engineer has been caught up with a few different projects lately, neglecting any other maintenance that he can easily fix around this particular base. But it is on his list to fix, whether he actually has gotten to it is yet to be foreseen. It’s up to the Administrator now to decide if an evening brawl would be worthy to add to the workday. That would be a nightmare.

“I’m sure he’ll get to it once he gets a break.”

Clear cut eyes still question your authority, not the answer of a go ahead for a temporary truce. Really, it likely had the opposite effect with their fingers sliding towards the trigger, while your tired hands are slowly seceding to your own gun. If they fire first, well, it shows a reflection of their own character. That or they need more of an outright spelled out truth. Which really, the lead paint they must’ve licked, had done more damage than what New York State had initially found in their own population.

“Don’t bother to waste your bullets–”

A quiet snark leaving your throat, the smoke escaping your lips as the warm cigarette rests between your forefingers.

“–Sending me through respawn only gives him more time.”

Fallen ash singes against the cooling desert sand, drifting back into the earth between the gentle breeze. Their soldier, becoming increasingly antsy about the lack of gunpowder flying into the air, doesn't even bother to hide it on his face. To level the amount of testosterone of ego out on a 3 v 1, your eyes connect with the shade of crimson with a cross that trails up to their medic.

“She needs you more than what I’m worth in wasted time.”

Perhaps in a way, bargaining for a favor without outright stating it, being saved for a later date not explicitly labeled. You haven’t once brandished your gun for a show of power, nor have they shot you up into a million pieces. Granting mercy to bloodthirsty mercenaries. Aside from some on your team berating you for inaction, the Administrator has eyes everywhere in the Badlands, not just this particular map of dust. You’ve seen the hawking cameras blinking in dark corners documenting everyone’s moves. Could it land you under Miss Pauling’s quicklime? Possibly.. If it’s a repeated behavior, however, you don’t foresee that happening again. If their medic is anything like yours, it’s possible that your counterpart would be tethered to him on the field. Given her judgments and of what little Spy has shared in code, you seriously doubt that she’ll listen to even her own healer of the team.

You’re only here for money, not to worry about anyone else. It’s the entire point of why you’re here in the first place, not to brawl it out 24/7.

Are you putting too much faith in your enemies? Quite likely, but maybe you can guilt one of the three of them for a favor down the line if this fragile equilibrium, at some point, falls apart. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a risk you’re willing to take. A life for a life won’t leverage its own weight in a world of daily rebirth by bloodshed. A debt for a debt holds a hierarchy in a lawless land.

Their medic, jaw clenched, must've struck a nerve somewhere but refuses to show it. Giving a silent eye to their Heavy for a silent reassurance of the next step. While their Soldier is barely keeping restraint to shoot something on behalf of Uncle Sam or for the honor of America. A brief moment of silence, before sharp eyes reacknowledge your peace bargain.

“Danke.”

A 2/3rd agreement to keep moving forward, while Soldier grumbling at sparing the life of an enemy. He may be trigger happy because you exist in blue, but at the least is willing to half recognize a peace offering with information.

The barrage of dust and sand kicks back up, as their plans of attack fade with the movement of tumbleweeds strolling alongside you under a waning moon. Hand resting in the comfort of your coat pockets. Your cigarette, a dim beacon of light against the growing darkness in the night sky. Stars peeking out against the handful of bright lights against wooden shacks against the field.

The logistics of morality in private combat is ever changing, and quite frankly gives you a headache to try and think about “doing the right thing” when following the money supports your family. Your heart only knows one certainty when it comes to such mental conflicts on the field.

You’re not a bad person.

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A few fun facts with the research I did for this fic:

New York city was the first city to outlaw further usage of lead paint in 1960 before New York state followed through banning usage of lead paint in the late 70s. Lead was effectively banned in 1986, however it didn’t apply to pipes that were already in the ground and walls already painted with lead, it only banned new lead pipes to be placed in for usage beyond. https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/lead-poisoning-information-for-building-owners.page

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/13/what-would-it-cost-to-replace-all-the-nations-lead-water-pipes/

I had to take a few liberties with blue spesh and a bit of history too, so I figured that she might get enjoyment out of radio dramas since her inspiration of doing theater in university before dropping out had to come from somewhere. The 70s had a dry spell of radio dramas, since reruns of shows weren’t really commonplace and many live radio dramas were performed live on air in the 40s and 50s until recording media for reruns. Earplay is an actual radio drama that aired in 1972 until 1982 but got picked up by other networks at least until the 1990s.But for this fic its gonna be running a bit earlier than 1972. The Firesign Theatre actually did have some albums for their shows, before their second split.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firesign_Theatre#Albums