Chapter Text
When Tucker joined the military, he didn't actually expect to fight anything. He had no plans to get ripped, or be good with a gun, or learn how to build bombs and repair tanks. He had no skill set for those things, and he never considered building one. Every operation needs the background hands wasting away their days filing all the paperwork the real heroes don't have time to bother with, or pressing those buttons that need pressing even though no one wants to do it.
Tucker is a simple man, with simple needs: get paid, get laid. He could have done that, with a desk job. Probably at the same time, with the right kind of supervisor, the right kind of coworker, and the right kind of supply closet. Maybe, in one of those alternate universes Simmons goes on about, Alt-Tucker is doing just that. For Alt-Tucker, the most dangerous thing is paper cuts in the Alt-supply closet.
Back in this universe: danger for Tucker means black-armored mystery soldiers bursting into the base at twelve fifteen in the afternoon like they're here to assassinate the president.
After everything that's happened, it occurs to him -- here, with his hands up -- that this is the first time he's actually looked down the barrel of a gun. He's got his bodysuit and his armor pants on, at least, but it's not a good look.
Then the stranger says, "Where's Private Church?"
There are a million responsible things to think and realize in a scenario like this one. Is anyone coming for help? What can I say to buy more time? I have to pick between my life and my teammates life right now; have I regenerated any fucks to give for that, yet?
All Tucker can think is: Oh shit it's a chick.
Naturally, his response to this information is, "What?"
The Lady Stranger doesn't even take the time to roll her eyes. "Your most recent squad roster has Privates Tucker, Caboose, and Church." She leans into her stance, pressing further into his chest plate with her boot and the gun closer to his face. "Where. Is Private. Church?"
Now, Tucker feels certain ways when talking to women. Many of them inappropriate in conversation between gentlemen, and many others which will forever be between Tucker and the diary he doesn't write because he's not a weenie (or a Red, not like there's a difference).
Tucker says, "If I tell you, will you let me live?" and he realizes he doesn't feel any of those usual Chick Talk ways. Tucker doesn't feel excited or nervous, he just doesn't want to die. For once, he's not talking to a girl, he's talking to someone who wants him dead. So, nothing new.
He starts moving his hands down, away from his head. She's already disposed of his guns, and he doesn't have a knife holster. Nothing to get antsy about.
She says, "You and your buddies killed four of my friends," and that's not exactly new, either. Her helmet twitches to his hands, but he has nothing in reach. "But I might be convinced to make it painless."
"Girl, your negotiating skills suck."
She focuses back on his face, where Tucker does some of his best work.
"If you want, I could show you mine." His hand finally finds his leg. "It's a sword."
Tucker starts swinging before he even hits the button. His attacker jumps back with crazy speed, and the tip barely slices through her grieve. He rolls back, onto his feet, and pulls the blade in front of his face, just before she starts shooting. Every single bullet is exactly on trajectory for his eyes, and melts on impact with plasma.
From the left, "Hey!" pivots her attention off of Tucker, just in time to have her pistol shot out of her hand. Wash, fully armored, stands in the hallway entrance, rifle up. His focus doesn't flinch from the intruder, but he orders, "Tucker, radio!"
Tucker's helmet is on the couch, two long steps away. On the other side of that is the Reds. Tucker stands to reach--
In a flash, out of the corner of his eye, the intruder snatches something off her leg and then it's smacking Tucker's hand like an electric fastball with a SMAKZZT that goes all the way down Tucker's toes. His legs seize up and he plants his face into the concrete.
He hears Wash shout, "Freeze!" and shots go off, cut short by a high pitched hum of machinery and then the thud of armor hitting armor hitting armor. When Tucker looks up, the intruder is ju-jitsing the rifle right out of Wash's hands and kicking him away. He doesn't lose his feet, but the intruder gets her hand on the trigger. Tucker hefts his sword to throw--
"Church!" Caboose goes from not being in the room, to shouldering the intruder so hard in the ribs she flies into the far wall. In socks and sweats, Caboose almost slips on the concrete floor.
Tucker dives behind the couch, finally gets hands on his helmet, shoves his head into it and clicks open the open channel.
"Blues to Reds, hostile intruder! We need back up!"
Sarge makes it on the line first. "Alrighty, to officially open negotiations--"
Rifle fire and the microwave exploding blocks out whatever tangent Sarge starts on.
"You can have the flag, no one gives a shit! Send. Help. Now!"
There's a clamor of noise in the background. Grif shouts back, "We're on our way!"
The couch suddenly lifts away. Wash ducks and Caboose javelins it across the room, but the intruder ducks, too. The sofa accordions against the far wall, sending splinters around Wash, who's pulled a knife from somewhere. But a knife's not going to cut it against the fucking BR.
While the intruder is still standing from the sofa missile, Tucker charges in. One wild swish around her shoulder that she tries to block with the rifle, and the gun is split in half, dropping useless bullets.
Then Tucker sees stars and staggers back, jaw throbbing under his helmet. Caboose wraps his arms around her from behind, and she jams her heel into his toes. He drops her and hops back, squeaking, "Ow, ow, ow!"
Tucker takes a second swish, aim wild, and she bobs around the blade, weaves under his arm, and next thing he knows he's looking at the ceiling. There's quick clangs of armor on armor on knife blade and then another sharp ZZZTT and one more hard thud. Tucker hasn't even rolled over and he knows Wash is on the ground.
"Are you "Private Church?"" she asks harshly.
Tucker finally (it has not been long enough to be "finally") makes it to his knees. Sure enough, the intruder has a boot on Wash's chest, her knee across his, and a black, sparking, baton across his neck. Tucker's sword and Wash's knife are both a long reach away. He starts to go for it, but then Wash lifts a hand to "stop." Tucker freezes.
"What do you want?" Wash asks.
Tucker expects the intruder to growl or shock Wash again. Instead, her head flinches back.
The pause goes on for too long. Caboose comes up behind Tucker, but Tucker holds out an arm to stop him. Wash's helmet barely tilts and Tucker knows he's glanced their way. Tucker shrugs to Wash. He's only willing to wait so long for this. Blue Team's death count is high enough as-is.
Back to the intruder Wash says, "If we can do this without bloodshed, it's probably to the benefit all of us."
The intruder tosses the baton aside.
Tucker starts to say, "Well that was easy--"
And then she goes for the seals on Wash's helmet and tosses it clear across the room before Wash can even get his hands up. Caboose barely catches it.
"Wash…" Her stance over him falls apart. She has to drop a hand to his chest to catch herself. "Washington?"
Then her armor shifts. Not like Tex, to turn invisible, but the color changes. It shifts from black to teal. Aqua. Lightish blue green something or other.
Wash looks shell shocked. Tucker has never seen him this caught off guard. He starts to say, "Caro…" but trails off, floundering.
"Wash?" the woman says again.
"Boss?"
---
There were people outside. Maybe they were hostile, but maybe they weren't. Maybe they were Tucker's back-up. Maybe they were someone completely different who just wanted to off CT. Tucker could not have given less of a shit.
He was done. He was so done here. This had to end. This had to end today.
...but just in case.
Tucker stuck his helmet to the door, cranked his speaker volume all the way up, and just listened. Most sound wouldn't travel through well unless someone outside was shouting, or if they were standing close enough to the entrance. He got nothing for a while, which would make sense. CT would want to keep people away from the door. But there were other thin portions of the walls, too. Tucker ran between them until he could make out voices.
He could just hear, through one portion, “Sarge this place gives me the creeps.”
...No. There’s no way it’s that Sarge. Plenty of Sargent officers get called that. Which meant there was more than one person outside.
The guy outside kept talking. "Something’s really wrong here. I mean, why would they deliberately pull the radio out of their own jeep? And why can't I get a signal on long rage?"
Yes! Something was absolutely, definitely wrong here and--
Wait. Tucker knew that voice. That's the desk guy that took his distress call.
“Something does seem out of place…”
Tucker had to back away for a second. He had to… he had to get ready. Whoever was outside didn’t know the full extent of what was going on, and they would need help. He had to make a plan. One that wasn’t a fever dream he cooked up with boredom. A real plan.
There was plenty of ammo with the supplies. They didn't know what might be living inside the temple when they got there, after all, so they'd traveled heavy. Not that any of that mattered, because there was also an array of alien plasma lasers they dug up that don't even need bullets.
Tucker was also pretty sure remembered enough of the maps to know where he can stick his sword (bow-chicka-bow-wow) on the outside of the temple to make the defense systems go off. If he's lucky -- and he had earned some fucking luck -- they'll go off like they're supposed to and only attack people hostile to Tucker.
Get out the front door. Take a left. Carving that looks like a boob. Use sword. Fucking run.
"This is gonna suck," Tucker said, to psych himself up. "I'm gonna hate this. I'm gonna hate this. This is gonna suck.”
Through the door, Tucker heard shouting. It was CT. “Who sent you here, what do they know about us?”
“Damnit, Caboose, why d’you keep messin’ with the vehicles!”
Oh of course Command sent Caboose with them. What, did they think Tucker was going to get sentimental and feel rewarded, finally seeing an old squadmate? Tucker didn’t even like Caboose. The guy just seemed to appear in all the crucial moments of Tucker’s life. Really, what else should Tucker have even expected.
So, fuck it.
Tucker swung the blade of his sword past the door and, for the first time in months, it started to move.
---
"Agent Carolina" -- or whoever she is -- agrees to be locked in the empty Blue Captain's quarters ("You have to know that won't hold her," Wash informs them and is then ignored for two minutes) while they talk in the sound-proof grunt barracks down the hall. It only takes a twenty minute negotiation to get Sarge inside.
Tucker takes a seat on his cot. Wash takes a seat on his. Caboose is already throwing crayons in a duffle bag. "I'm getting Church back."
“You actually want to go with the psycho lady?” Grif asks.
“Church would do it for me,” Caboose says with absolute certainty.
Tucker is pretty sure that he wouldn’t. Or, at least, the Church he’d known wouldn’t. The Church that Caboose brought back with him (the one that’s technically part of the same Church that Tucker knew but isn’t? Whatever, it’s confusing and Tucker decided it wasn’t worth asking after they left that other Church in the snow.) might. He seemed weirdly motivated to actually do things.
Grif turns to Wash and says, "And you wanna help?"
Wash hadn’t said anything about it, but now Tucker sees it all over him. He’s been stuck in “thinking mode” for the last fifteen minutes. It makes sense. This Carolina person was his squad mate way before any of the guys were.
"I thought you and Church-Epsilon-Whoever didn't get along?"
Instead of answering the question, Wash says, "I don't have a lot of options. I've gotten… comfortable. But the UNSC will be back for you all soon."
"You don't wanna go back to prison," Simmons guesses.
"Yeah."
Tucker feels a defensive wave of… something. "What makes you think they'll even care?" he says. "They overlooked you back at Sidewinder. They didn't even know you shouldn't be a human. If it's all buried enough, they might just ship you back to whatever address they gave "Leonard Church"."
Wash thinks to himself for a moment, with a constipated expression, and then drops, with no further preamble, "Leonard Church is the name of the missing Director of Project Freelancer."
Tucker waits for the punchline on that. It doesn't come. Suddenly Simmons says, "Ooooooh." He slaps his own forehead, which makes a metal clank sound with his cyborg parts. "So many things suddenly make sense."
Tucker doesn’t share whatever Simmons’ revelation is -- unless that revelation is that people who name AI are narcissists and Church’s whole subsequent personality kinda makes sense now -- but he doesn’t need to. Wash is going with Carolina. Maybe she came back for him on accident, but she came back for him. His escape has arrived. Tucker gets it.
"It's not like I didn't earn some jail time, in there," Wash admits. "I mean, I got a call out to Doc to check on--"
Yada yada “my dark past” yada yada. Tucker doesn't need another long winded drama thing from Wash. He groans loudly over it. "This is such bullshit."
Sarge, who had somehow managed to be in a room without taking up half of it for once, suddenly speaks up. “This Director guy… He’s the one who got us all tossed here, yeah?”
“That’s right,” Wash says.
“He’s the guy who screwed all of us over,” Simmons says, mostly to himself. “All of us, the freelancers…”
“Church,” Caboose says.
Tucker falls back onto his bed and tosses his arms over his face. He doesn’t want to leave here. Well, he does but not like this. Not to go on some new bullshit mission to get himself killed.
But he can’t… he can’t stay here by himself.
“If the Blues are goin’, I’m goin’,” Sarge decides, suddenly.
“You just can’t handle the idea of Red Team not existing once Blue Team is gone,” Grif says.
“It’s part of the balance of man, Private! A Blue simply cannot function without at least one Red to keep them in check. Tell ‘im, Simmons!”
Simmons, who will likely die in Sarge’s shadow, says, “We’re taking all the food with us.”
“I hope you both die before me so I can desecrate your graves,” Grif says.
Sarge yells, “That’s the spirit!”
Nice of them, to just assume that Tucker is going with them.
Except thinking about watching them leave makes something gross -- something emotional -- twist in his chest. He gets two seconds further into pictureing the empty base, and waiting by the radio for a UNSC call and--
Shit. Turns out, Tucker really has regenerated a fuck to give.
Well, he guesses, it's never a bad time to start giving back to your community.
First, however, he needs to scrape that fuck out of the bottom of his barrel of fucks. So, he groans long and loud enough to feel it in his chest. He morphs that horrible noise into, "Yeah, okay, let's do it."