Chapter Text
There's this story, about a guy who falls down a hole.
---
You can't feel temperature through space marine armor. It regulates itself to whatever you happen to be in the mood for, or whatever keeps you healthy, or to as cold as it can get while attempting to operate in a desert for four months straight. It's computer regulated, so it knows better than the person inside it what the best temperature should be.
All that to say, Tucker's suit keeps him at a right cozy seventy three degrees Fahrenheit while he's standing knee deep in snow and Tucker is cold. He's been sweating his actual ass off for months. Existing at a temperature below eighty should be the best day of his horrible life, and instead he's cold because at some point his body caved in and actually adjusted to the approximate temperature of Satan's ass.
All that to say, Tucker is not in the best mood as he tosses his rifle into the back of a UNSC warthog, and it's not just because one of the best friends he's ever had fucked off without a word... again. When he hears Caboose call, "Wash, come on!" his will to exist drops from "might as well" to "please remind me why." If he's going to have to deal with Michael Jackass Caboose again, he cannot do it while pulling someone else along. The least the universe can do for him at this point is give him a proactive teammate.
When he turns over his shoulder to see Agent Washington is standing still and staring pensively in the other direction, he groans hard enough to scratch his throat. Tucker feels one of his last ounces of patience fall out of his mouth. There's not even anything to look at over there. Grif gave him a heads up that the new guy's a bit of a drama queen, but what is he doing? Gazing into the future or some shit?
"Stop staring, start moving, let's go!" He finds himself calling out loud. Not that they know where they're going, other than "the general direction the Reds' hornet flew off in, because why not." They're supposed to go back to their assigned bases and wait out until the UNSC can finish cleaning up the freelancer mess, but they also figure it doesn't actually matter which bases they end up at. According to Agent Washington, this planet is covered in sim bases -- and facilities with warp doors that lead to sim bases -- so they could head in any direction and hit a base eventually. Even Blood Gulch.
Caboose bounds the last few paces to the warthog (the snow doesn't come close to his knees). Wash doesn't even turn in their direction. At least they don't need to be facing each other to be heard, with the radios and all.
"We should take two," Wash says.
"Two what?" Tucker asks, and another fuck leaves his grasp. This better not be a metaphor for starting over. Tucker doesn't have room in his energy stores for metaphors.
"Two warthogs."
Before Tucker can open his mouth, Caboose shouts, "I'll drive!" and all but dives into the warthog parked next to the one Tucker hasn't even stepped into yet.
"What for?" Tucker asks Washington. "We'll all fit in one."
Wash finally turns around and finally makes it to the jeeps. "Just a feeling," he says.
He gets into the warthog that Tucker is driving, so Tucker at least knows that he doesn't have a death wish.
---
They were alone, when they first got to the desert. Well, alone in that it was just Tucker, Junior, and the combination human-Sangheili squad he was deployed with. It was pretty chill, as far as deserts could be, but they'd just come from Sanghelios and being a human on that planet is anything but chill. On the way to the temple, he and Junior had some poetic father-son bonding over some sick sunsets, humans and aliens 'oohed' and 'aahed' his sword, and he got to flex for some lady soldiers and scientists. It wasn't their first tour out digging up some artifacts, but Tucker hoped they'd find something cooler than just "big rock," "fancy old scribbles," or "space cube."
Tucker spent most of the trip not attempting to learn traditional Sangheili -- he can understand Junior, and Junior understands them, so who cares? -- and waving his sword around to make things glow wherever he was told. Sometimes he helped drive the jeeps or dig up stray rocks because it was something to do, but the others understood that he was multitasking all of this with single fatherhood and didn't get onto him about how much he just sat around. When they did ask, he informed them, importantly, that alien energy swords in the hands of humans do not invent their own fighting styles. His instructor on Sanghelios had helped a lot, but their arms just don't bend the same way. All of the swinging of his sword he did outside the camp sites was strictly in the interest of developing viable combat strategy.
It had almost nothing to do with the little excited noises Junior made when he almost landed that flip with it.
It definitely had nothing to do with the fact that, while the desert air was consistently halfway to boiling acid, every mile they took away between them and the temple gave him goosebumps. If Tucker personally caused a delay in the caravan (by, say, accidentally throwing his sword into a tire that would take a day to change) it had everything to do with fatherhood or exhaustion from sword practice and nothing to do with trying to stall.
One of Tucker's guards -- the one with the snake tattoo on his face that covered an absolutely sick scar -- called him out on it, once. He didn't make fun of him for it. He figured it was just Tucker's connection to all the alien stuff. That maybe he and the temple recognized each other or something. (Snake Face was real fun at parties.)
"Nah, it's none of that," Tucker told him. "I don't know, it's just a feeling."
---
They find the Reds' crashed hornet about ten miles out. They're all fine, of fucking course. Blue Team gives the second warthog to the Reds in exchange for humiliating Simmons, and Caboose hops into the newly dubbed "Blue Hog." Simmons calls shotgun and looks baffled when no one contests it. Grif drives, and Sarge sits in the back seat to prop his feet up on Grif's head.
While in the air, the Reds had spotted two dots that looked a lot like sim trooper bases some miles out. So, their driving direction gets more specific, at least. It also gets more dangerous, because while Caboose driving on his own is concerning, Sarge trying to egg them into a game of bumper cars is worse.
They drive through the night and out of the snow. The climates on this planet are complete nonsense, so by nightfall the roadside is green and the readout on Tucker's HUD puts the outside temperature above seventy five degrees. They can't pull over without Sarge forcing Grif to gun it, so Tucker gets Caboose to take his helmet off while he's still driving. Simmons' helmet isn't far behind. Grif's comes off at the next pitstop.
Wash spends a solid hour running HUD scans on their empty surroundings (field, tree, cliff, tree, lots of trees, field) before his comes off. Every few hours he puts it on again, just to be sure. Caboose tells Wash he'll keep an ear and an eye out for him, as if that's comforting somehow. The low-key paranoia actually gets Tucker scanning around a few times, before he catches himself. It's not like he's willing to give one of his last precious fucks about the new guy going back to jail.
But then Wash says, "Thanks, Caboose."
And Caboose says, "That's what party members are for."
And Tucker tentatively considers laying a fuck on the table.
---
They weren't the first ones to reach the temple. When the spire finally came in sight and their caravan pulled over the last dune, warthogs and mongooses (mongeese?) and even a fucking behemoth were swarmed around the temple. Tucker, perhaps riding a little high on the title of Inter-species Ambassador Extraordinaire, offered his compatriots a smooth, "I got this," and marched down the dune.
Explaining all the ways in which Tucker did not "got this" would be a waste of everyone's time. As he would be lectured by his guards later: "Tactless approach of the armed and unidentified," "complete inconsideration for maintaining advantages," "poor ability to dodge bullets," blah blah blah, everything worked out okay. Whoever built the armor for Blue Army did a hell of a job, and all the proper "Cease fire"s and "We come in peace"s were exchanged.
The troops already surrounding the temple sent out their commander, a guy in brown armor with white Military Police accents and a funky helmet, and Tucker's caravan sent Snake Face to meet him. Turned out they were all different UNSC branches whose bosses sucked at communicating with each other. Everyone was on the same side. They could work together.
As the two teams started to mingle, the commander approached Tucker directly.
"Sorry about that shitty first impression," he said. "I'm still working the itchy trigger finger out of some of my men. They got a jumpy when you pulled out that sword."
"Bow chicka-bow wow."
"What?"
He'll learn, Tucker assured himself. They all learn.
"Don't sweat it," Tucker tells him, fully intending to make him sweat about it later. He bet there were some serious goods to be traded in the form of human cuisine in their storage. Tucker probably would have committed treason for a hotdog. For the moment, he held out a hand. "I'm Tucker."
The commander shook it. "CT."
The temple doors opened to the sound of applause.