TF2 X Reader Oneshots & Imagines

Engie Dad & Child Reader ~ Realization

Summery: Engie's led a life in the footsteps of those before him. He comes from a long lineage of those with the workers call that have led him to this military base in the middle of nowhere. He's never questioned it, never thought to lead a different life, to live, to be something more than hands on a machine...

Until he saw you

TW: violence/blood/allusions to abuse/extensive talk about neglect

God how he despised that sound, that little echo that was constantly going through his brain. The small voice that kept him up at night, the little whispers that stole his sanity every minute he was alive.

'Work. Work. Ya have ta get ta work. What are ya doin'? You're wastin' time! Ya won't get anythin' done, nothin's gonna get finished. God ain't you just lazy lyin' 'round like someone's gonna do it for ya'

How he despised its nagging, how he hated its control over him. That voice, that voice, THAT VOICE! He wanted a moment, a moment of silence, a moment of calm. A moment to remain as nothing and be okay with it.

But that was never enough for a Conager.

How he loathed that name.

"A Conager always has work ta do" he could hear a voice echo

"Ain't no time ta dilly dally boy!"

"I'm busy son, go ask your mother"

"If ya ain't helpin' then ya best be leavin'"

The sound of that familiar voice built utter disgust in him. The man who gave him the whispers and the one who tried to excuse that loathsome action. How he hated the man's tinges of tone, his echoes of sound that he could identify within a million others. The sound of a man that barely knew him, the one who had never spent a day of his life away from his machines.

His father

A busy and absent man, a figure of the Conager name that followed in the footsteps of his father and his father's father and whatever came generations before that. The man was a hard worker, no one could deny that, Dell especially. Ever since he was a teen and started to hear the faint whispers of the workers call he had been able to spot a screaming yell in his father's eyes, that is the few times he ever got to see him. It was the silent whispers, their rageful ranting of unproductivity that Dell remembered. And, as if a contagion given only through exposure Dell now heard those same whispers. The whispers he fed each day as he put his body to work, the type that drained all other aspects of his life. All relationships, all hobbies, all normal bodily needs were taken from him by the want- no the need to work, to improve, to create, to destroy.

Eleven PHDs and a few decades later and only now did he recognize what had happened, what had led him here, what had been taken from him. He stood amongst machines and blueprints, his life's work, and yet he felt...

Empty...

This wasn't his choice, this wasn't what he had wanted, this...this was inherited torture, a curse of whispers! He stood among a sea of lost dreams once hidden behind screens of 'more important things'. The lives and love he's lost, the things he'd given up in favor of this. This life of wires, this descent into total isolation with his machines. Here he stood, broken, soulless...

Lost...

Why? Why now, of all times, was he dwelling on the life he lived, of everything that he'd missed? Well, that was due to one small little thing. It was so innocent, so seemingly out of its depth. Yet when he saw it, when he stared into the wide eyes of this young being, he saw it. He saw everything. He saw what every part of his being had longed for despite his whispered thoughts...