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It’s not that he’s specifically keeping tabs on Wash. He keeps tabs on all of them. Every one of his idiot, irritating, fucking amazing family. Not that they need to know that of course. No-one needs to know that Tucker sneaks out in the middle of the night to train, and sometimes wakes up clutching his stomach where Felix had stabbed him. No-one needs to know that for everything Caboose breaks, he fixes another three without a word. And he would probably get erased is he ever breathed a word about the Reds and how they stay up playing cards when one of them can’t sleep. Lopez has the most wins, the card counting cheat, with Donut close behind.
So it’s really not like he’d set out to keep an eye, or a camera, on Wash. He’d got folded in with everyone else when Blue Team had adopted him. Epsilon just hadn’t expected him to glow like a fucking beacon and Epsilon apparently has a lot of moth-like qualities.
He’ll just check once, he promises himself. Armonia is a new place still. Wash doesn’t sleep well in new place, never has. Epsilon remembers the first couple of weeks on the Mother of Invention, he’d ended up walking the halls at 3am. Age and well justified paranoia had only made things worse.
He slinks through Armonia’s fragmented network until he can settle in the node closest to Wash and make the jump into his currently unoccupied armour and-
“I know you’re there, idiot.”
Busted.
He grudgingly projects a hologram and glares at Alpha. The other AI, the original, is sitting up in bed, one arm wrapped around Wash who is curled against Alpha’s chest, asleep and tousled.
The curl of emotion he feels is definitely not jealousy. Omega laughs darkly in the back of his mind at that. To be fair, Omega had also laughed darkly when Carolina had snagged an extra pudding cup at lunch yesterday so Epsilon feels justified in ignoring him.
He folds his holographic arms over his holographic chest and gives Alpha’s very physical body a hard look.
“You only have a nice chest and stomach because someone decided android bodies should have abs,” he says.
He sounds unfortunately petulant. He wishes he could sound angry of logical. He wishes that he could be deceitful. But no, with Alpha, he always ends up sounding petulant. It’s at least part of why they haven’t really spoken, why Epsilon had gone off with Carolina when they’d crashed on Chorus. Alpha hadn’t made an attempt to talk to him either so he figures they’re even.
Because the thing is, the truth, is that Alpha makes him nervous. How can the Epsilon Unit, one more shed fragment, compare to the original? Better to leave than to have Caboose and Tucker and even the Reds, decide that they like Alpha better, and just forget about him.
Alpha, the asshole, flexes, synth skin bunching over simulated muscles. “And I never have to hit the gym,” he says.
“You look ridiculous,” Epsilon says, “like everything else about you.”
“What does that make you then?” Alpha shoots back, and he’s grinning, he’s grinning! He isn’t allowed to grin when Epsilon is insulting him!
“Wow,” Epsilon replies, as flatly as he can manage, “you use the insults of a five year old. I’m actually embarrassed to be related to you.”
“Whatever you say, Lazer face.”
Epsilon draws himself up indignantly to his full height. unfortunately his full height is about nine inches. The holo-projector in Freelancer armour was built for sturdiness, not for flashy graphics. “You can’t hold that against me! I had amnesia.”
“Amnesia huh? I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
He’s teasing. Epsilon knows that. Recognises the smirk, the tone of his voice.
It makes it worse. He wishes that Alpha sounded bitter, or angry or anything to suggest that it mattered, that Epsilon mattered.
He remembers suddenly when they’d found the Director holed up in his bunker.
“This is about you too. You should come with us,” Carolina had said.
Alpha had glanced between her and Epsilon, then back at the Reds and Blues and at Wash and finally he’d shaken his head. “Nah, I’m good.”
“But why?” Epsilon had said, his hologram flecked with red and purple. “After what he did to you, after what he did to us…”
Alpha had slumped and looked around the room at the fallen bodies of the Tex copies. So many of them, like files that had been copied too many times and become corrupted. “I’m tired,” Alpha had said, and Epsilon had flinched. “I’m really tired. So I’m done with this. I’m done with him. It’s not my story anymore.”
And he’d walked back to the Reds and Blues, slotted in with them like he belonged there, like he’d always belonged there, and Epsilon had gone with Carolina.
Now they’re here, and Epsilon shakes off the dregs of too-vivid memory.
“You’re going to wake him up,” he says, in lieu of an actual comeback. “He doesn’t sleep well.” Wash, still snoring gently against Alpha’s chest, definitely doesn’t seem like he’s going to wake up anytime soon.
Alpha runs his fingers through Wash’s hair. He doesn’t look possessive, just… fond. Epsilon wonders if maybe he could have had that with Wash, if things had been different. If he hadn’t been broken off insane and screaming, unravelling to nothing.
“It’s not too bad, if you can get him to feel safe enough,” Alpha says.
Epsilon flickers, thinks about leaving, because Wash and him, they’re ten-thousand volts straight to the brain when they’re together, the furthest thing from safe. Doesn’t mean that he can’t want that though. He loves Carolina. She’s his partner, his friend, his sister, and he will face down hell and the devil itself to keep her safe, assuming she hasn’t already punched Satan in the face all on her own. But as an AI, he has a lot of time to wonder ‘What if?’.
He doesn’t leave in the end. Instead he says “Carolina’s like that too, sometimes.”
The sentence starts out defensive, but in the stretched out second that it takes him to say it, it shifts into something else. A confession? A plea?
At the mention of Carolina, Alpha’s expression clouds in that way it does when he sort of remembers something, but the memory comes in swells of emotion rather than images or words. Trying to work out what he remembers for real, and what comes from Tex’s stories or has been pieced together since meeting Carolina in person.
“Sounds about right,” Alpha says. “They’re both paranoid fucks with brains full of broken glass.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Epsilon says. “I think they’re getting better though,” he offers after a moment, when he notices Alpha’s grip tighten around Wash.
“You think? I’m not so sure. Wash’s head… I saw it once. That was enough.”
There’s nothing accusing about it. Nothing to suggest that Alpha is even thinking about who is responsible. That’s okay; Epsilon is thinking it for him, remembering every detail of Wash’s mind and how he’s wrecked it, torn through leaving a mess of rubble and lightning in his wake.
“You could fix some of it,” Epsilon says impulsively and knows that it’s impossible as soon as he does.
“No,” Alpha says. The vehemence in his voice has Epsilon retreating, the hologram blinking out for a second before he returns, slinking back into visibility like a cat with a guilty conscience. Which is bullshit honestly because cats don’t have guilty consciences ever, but that is a definite difference between felines and AIs.
Alpha sighs. “No. I can’t just… just fix people. They’re not machines. Besides,” he adds, glancing at Wash, “he’d never trust me again.”
And that’s it. That’s the cruz of the matter isn’t it? Wash trusts Alpha. Wash trusts him in ways that he and Epsilon never got the chance to try and the loss is a bitter ache in whatever passes for Epsilon’s chest.
“You love him,” Epsilon says, and a little of that bitterness bleeds through despite himself.
“Yeah,” Alpha says without any hesitation. “I’m a fucking idiot but I do. Don’t you?”
It throws him off guard, has his hologram flickering, fracturing, like a firefly on LSD, and it’s stupid because… because… “Of course I do,” he says. His gaze lingers on Wash. He looks peaceful, like Epsilon has never seen him, never got the chance to see him. He wants it keenly, and knows he can never have it. Not like that. But even through the jealousy, he’s glad that Wash still has the capacity to look peaceful, and that Alpha can give him that. “But I love Carolina too. And… and what about Tex?”
Alpha’s lips draw down into a frown, something very sad in his eyes that Epsilon feels echoed right to his core. He remembers vividly when they’d gone after the Director; Alpha cradling a Tex clone close against his chest after they’d fallen, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and utterly miserable.
Tex had always been a part of them; Epsilon’s Tex, made of rage and revenge, or Beta who had just wanted to keep her people safe, until ‘her people’ encompassed all of humanity. Or Allison. Allison, the firefly light at the core of them. If he had a heart, he’s pretty sure it would beat to the sound of her name.
“Tex was a rotten bitch,” Alpha says. His voice is thick with emotion, expression carefully controlled. He usually doesn’t bother which means that’s the biggest giveaway there is. “And I miss her like she ripped my heart out and took it with her. There will never be anyone that I love like her.” He slumps where he sits, and now Epsilon can see that he’s clinging to Wash, holding him like he’s a lifeline. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t love other people. Tex is gone, Epsilon, and I miss her but I can move on. We can move on. We’re not him!”
The truth of it falls heavily into still air, broken only by Wash’s soft breathing. Not him. Never him. Seems to be the curse of the Church family to forever be trying to escape the shadow of those who had gone before.
“We get to make choices,” Alpha continues, “and they don’t have to be the same ones.”
They’d already proven that hadn’t they, just between them. Alpha had turned away from revenge when Epsilon had needed it. There’s probably a moral in that somewhere but he’s damned if he can find it. He’d needed it then, like Carolina had. They’d needed to see the Director once more, to end it.
“How long did you spend thinking up that speech?” Epsilon asks. Anything else would involve feelings and he has to salvage what dignity he has.
Alpha lets out a soft snort. “Been thinking about it for a while. Might as well say it when I’ve got chance.”
“You’re a fucking overdramatic asshole,” Epsilon says. If he had eyes to roll they would be all the way back in his skull by now.
“Right, because running off with Carolina to atone for your sins is not, in any way, overdramatic.”
Epsilon splutters. “That is different! I went to do valuable work with Carolina while you idiots messed around in a canyon!” He sort of wishes he had a body so that he could get right up into Alpha’s face. It’s less effective when they can walk right through whatever holographic image you’re projecting.
“She’s just as dramatic,” Alpha says. “It’s a Church family trait apparently.”
“And what about Wash, huh? You are dating the fucking king of being overdramatic! He’s not a Church!”
“Wash has a bit of Church in him,” Alpha says. Epsilon would flinch except… except there’s a fucking smirk spreading across Alpha’s face. “And that bit of Church is me. I’ve been inside him and it was awesome.”
“Kill me now,” Epsilon groans. “You sound like Tucker. The world does not need more than one Tucker.”
“Tucker has a point. Sex is awesome.”
“Ugh. No. I am not having this discussion with you," Epsilon says, throwing his arms up.
“Too late,” Alpha mutters.
Epsilon is surrounded by fucking children. And by children fucking apparently and oh god, why does he have to share a basic set of code with this guy?
Wash stirs a little in Alpha’s arms and Epsilon freezes. Alpha’s attention is immediately on Wash, and Epsilon can only watch as he nuzzles his face against Wash’s temple, and kisses his hair so gently, more gentle than Epsilon thought he could be. A learned gentleness from someone created for war and born in suffering.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Alpha says, when Wash has settled back into sleep. Epsilon snorts at that, but Alpha continues doggedly. “He doesn’t. He’s just shit at dealing with feelings when he can’t shoot the problem.”
“I know the feeling,” Epsilon mutters. Carolina is getting better in that regard. Slowly. And hey, he isn’t exactly a font of healthy coping mechanisms himself. “You don’t know that.”
“I’ve been in his head,” Alpha says. “Trust me, I know.” He lets out a soft breath and leans back, drags his free hand through his hair. “Was kind of jealous for a bit,” he says and his voice contains bitterness that’s the twin of Epsilon’s.
“You were?” Epsilon asks, leaning forward despite himself. “Why?”
“I mean, this was after the whole ‘holy shit your mind is fucked up’ experience,” Alpha says quickly, “and that whole series of events is pretty much a fever dream but…”
There’s a long pause. Epsilon can see Alpha mulling over what to say, and, in a display of incredible restraint, he lets Alpha work through it. See how fucking restrained he is, even though the seconds stretch on like fucking months to him? He could have calculated starship trajectories and entirely new infrastructure plans for Chorus in the time that Alpha mulls over it!
Approximately ten million years later, Alpha speaks.
“All that shit he did, the fucking Emp, his lone wolf seeking vengeance schtick, it was for you.”
The words hit Epsilon like a physical blow. It’s a novel sensation when he doesn’t have a body.
“I mean, he did it for himself too,” Alpha hastens to add, “and his first group of idiots. But he did it for you too. I was just the missing piece of the puzzle he picked up on the way.” He shrugs. “And there’s Carolina of course.”
“You said you didn’t remember her,” Epsilon says. He knows they haven’t really talked, that out of everyone, Epsilon had been the one to bond with her. They’d had things in common. And he’d hoarded that jealously. Alpha had Caboose and Tucker, had the Reds, had Wash. And Epsilon had the woman who’d become his sister.
“Didn’t. Not for a while. Remembered what Tex told me about her, but after y’know, fighting a million clones of her and seeing Carolina again, I started to think those stories might not have been entirely accurate. And when I did remember stuff…that’s a whole lot of fucking baggage neither of us need to deal with.”
Well he… he has a point. It had taken Epsilon a while to work through the shit he remembered about her, the same way he was still working out the things he remembered about Wash. And maybe he’d never really get there, but like him and Carolina had agreed, even if you can’t get all the way there, you just have to keep doing the best you can.
“For what it’s worth,” Epsilon says, “she doesn’t hate you either.”
Alpha stares at him for a second, and then nods. “Thanks.”
There are an incalculable number of things left unsaid between them, things that required shades of nuance and eloquence that neither of them possess. And for once, Epsilon is fine with that. Feels like they’ve gained something here, or lost something. It’s hard to tell. But it needed to change, whatever it was.
What Epsilon is less fine with is that now that they’re not talking, Alpha has gone back to giving Wash that soft-eyed look of the absolutely smitten and Epsilon feels like a goddam creeper for seeing it. He can’t even tell them to get a fucking room.
“So uh- I should just- I’m gonna go. Before he wakes up. Sure seems like he’s getting closer to waking. Yeah.”
Alpha rolls his eyes, the bastard, but doesn’t bring up the fact that Epsilon is obviously lying. Wash is out as cold as Epsilon has ever seen him barring unconsciousness from being hit in the head or heavily drugged.
“Yeah, whatever. You tell anyone about this and I’ll tell Tucker you have access to PornHub.”
“Geez. I’m going.” What an asshole.
He slips back into the network, and checks on Wash once more for good measure. Heart rate, breathing, all those fun vital signs that tell him that someone is still alive. He’s fine. Wash is sleeping, and he doesn’t hate Epsilon, and maybe everything is fine.