What Reason Do You Need?

Chapter I

The funeral was next week.
There was an emptiness in the Scout's mind that he couldn't explain. No thoughts, no emotions. Hell, it seemed like nothing had changed, yet everything seemed so different. So alien.

The walls were alien. The furniture was alien. His mere existence was alien. Everything in the past, everything in his memory, didn't seem real. What was real, after all? She wasn't real. Not anymore, anyways.

It seemed like she'd always been dead. It hadn't taken long to get used to her lack of presence. Sure, it felt weird, but he no longer expected to find her round a corner, pestering him on his lateness. He was no longer surprised when meetings were held by the Spy. It felt somewhat normal, now, like it had always been this way.

She'd only been gone for a month.
The Medic and the Engineer spent that time trying to get the respawn to work again, but to no avail. For some reason, they were greeted by a faulty mechanism in one of their battles. And of course, she had to be the one to die. The boys were able to fix it, but all their files had been completely erased. The people living were able to replace theirs, since they were, after all, a walking hard drive. But her? How could they replace her?

The Engineer had worked so hard trying to recover her, but all that hard work finished at a dead end.

Even before Engi could give his verdict, everyone had accepted the fact she wasn't coming back. They were already mourning her.

And so, the "there's nothing we can do" phrase didn't hit the Scout as hard as he had imagined. They just sat there, solemnly. Strange for him to not speak. It seemed like, for the first time in his life, he didn't have anything to say. He looked at nothing, his gaze fixated, as if he'd just been subject to ridicule, and didn't have a comeback to counter. The men, for once, had something in common. A pain to share. And the aching thought that the ten mercenaries had now been reduced to only nine.