Work Text:
You are Leonard Church and you are an asshole.
No. That’s incorrect.
You are Epsilon and not only are you are simply the memories of Leonard Church, also known as the Alpha, you are The Biggest Asshole to exist. It’s written with capital letters because it’s a title and like hell you’re going to accept anything with all lowercase letters as your descriptor.
You’re The Biggest Asshole because you go with Carolina without as much as a goodbye. Though it had been her suggestion to do so, you still took the leap and leave the Reds and Blues hanging, which makes you a willing accomplice. You did it to protect them, to keep them from being dragged into the mess Project Freelancer made and that you and Carolina have taken upon yourselves to clean up. The fact that they ended up involved in the first place just makes it that much more important to keep them out of harm’s way because it shouldn’t have been their battle to fight. If they’d known you were going to leave, you know that they would’ve gone with you, and you couldn’t let that happen.
You know the Reds won’t give a shit that you left without a word (they never really cared about you anyway), but you feel bad about Tucker and Caboose and hope they aren’t taking it to heart.
You suppose you do feel guilty about Washington as well, but you burned that bridge when you got to it a long time ago. You don’t think he’ll be sad to see you gone—you aren’t particularly upset about leaving him behind either. For that matter, you don’t think Tucker will be distraught about you leaving either—he seems to prefer Washington anyway. Though you have the memories, you do not maintain the same relationship that Alpha did with Tucker. There’s a gap that you constantly mind and despite slipping seamlessly into the banter and the hostility that exists in their relationship, you still refuse to step completely into that territory.
It feels like trespassing.
Tucker aside, you feel especially shameful about Caboose. The poor kid is nice enough, but it feels wrong to try to fill the shoes of someone that you never can and never will. Best Friend is too extravagant a title for an AI fragment. Even your memories from Alpha suggest that Alpha felt uncomfortable with that label looped around his neck like a noose. Alpha felt undeserving of it, trapped by the obligation of it.
You have no right to claim it as your own, but you try your best to live up to the name. You know you don’t have the same complexity and depth that Alpha did (even after he lost pieces of himself) but you use your memories of Alpha—of yourself—to fill the gaps.
As it stands, you’re doing a real shitty job.
#
You and Carolina save everyone’s asses from certain death at the hands of mercenaries. You feel pretty damn great about it, soaring high on the exhilaration of Carolina’s fight with the Ones in Charge. You’re giddy, angry, and worried all at once—giddy because Carolina fucking showed them, angry and worried because she took a goddamn over-sized knife to the leg.
She doesn’t like when you show concern about her well-being, though, and since you hate when people worry about you too, you don’t fret where she can see. Instead you appear next to her and announce, “And that’s not all! Miss me, assholes?” because you’re pretty sure that’s the most tension-dissipating greeting to give to the Reds and Blues.
Except you’re wrong about that because Tucker dives right through you and screams, “You fuck!” as he hits the dirt helmet-first.
You stare down at him in surprise. “Huh. Wasn’t expecting that,” you say because you legitimately weren’t. That was not what you prepared for. You had expected a few choice words about your character and maybe even a shouting match. Maybe even ‘it’s about fucking time you got back’ and then the seamless transition into the usual routine of self-deprecation and making awful comments to each other’s faces.
But not such an emotional reaction from Tucker of all people, who, last time you checked, cares about you about as much as he cares about the war that Didn’t Really Exist—that is to say, not at all.
You have no goddamn idea how to deal with this reaction. You had a backup plan for every situation except this one.
Then Tucker tries to lay the blame on you. He treats all that happened to the Reds and Blues like it’s your fault, as though you could’ve predicted that they would get ambushed and captured and nearly killed, as though you leaving was the reason some of them almost died—as though you being there would’ve prevented any of those things from happening. It makes your anger spike and you retaliate because Tucker’s not being fair (you should’ve foreseen this; Tucker never plays fair), and if he thinks you’re going to take the piss for something that wasn’t your fault, he’s dead wrong.
So you say the first things (the wrong things, the kind of things friends shouldn’t say to each other) that come to mind because trying to puzzle through how to properly do this will waste too much precious time—time that’s needed to keep these idiots alive.
(In the end, you accept the blame while talking alone with Carolina. She reacts with confusion when you ultimately admit that it was your fault, but she’s learned to ignore your many illogical quirks. Delta is displeased with you for your irrationality, yet you remind him—yourself—of what you all know: The Alpha may be gone but you are part of him at your core, and the Alpha always took responsibility for whatever went wrong.)
#
You distance yourself from your friends—if you’re allowed to even call them that anymore—not because you want to, but because it’s the right thing to do.
No. It’s not the right thing to do at all.
But it is the safe thing to do.
You recognize this and act accordingly.
The first thing to do is separate yourself from them. It’s not an easy transition to make. What was once ‘us’ becomes ‘them,’ and ‘we’ becomes you and Carolina while the rest are the ‘Reds and Blues.’
You call Carolina ‘sis’ more often and stop referring to yourself as part of Blue Team. You were never part of Blue Team. That role had been exclusively Alpha’s. You’re a remnant of a broken program modeled off a broken man. Being Carolina’s brother and AI suits you better. You are both creations of the Director and you both experienced the Director’s neglect firsthand. You relate to her better than anyone else and vice versa, so you slide into an easy relationship comprised of sibling banter and the kind of familial bond that both of you have gone your whole lives without.
This bond will hurt you both in the end and you’re both well aware of the consequences. Carolina consistently asks you if you’re doing okay, if you’re feeling well. You don’t begrudge her for this—in terms of AI age, you’re old. Most AIs begin to destabilize at about seven years of age. You’re not sure how long Alpha had been around, but you’re aware of the fact that you’re approaching that threshold.
Or you’ve already passed it and have begun the deterioration process. You’re not entirely sure and you don’t know how you’ll be able to tell when it happens. It’s the equivalent to a terminally diseased human dying without knowing when their malady will kill them.
You’re acutely aware of mortality despite not being able to physically die the way Carolina can and will someday.
In fact, you’re not even considered ‘alive.’ You’re more of a functioning program doing what it’s supposed to be doing.
Alpha was different. He was alive. He was metastable and the closest to human an AI would ever get, aided by the fact that he was unaware he wasn’t human in the first place. You are a mere fragment of Alpha and you only have his and all the other fragments’ memories inside you because you were near enough to receive them (near enough to hear them beg you to remember them, and you locked their unwelcome memories away so you wouldn’t have to deal with them.)
#
Tucker has taken to telling you you’re a fragment, lately. You still haven’t apologized to him, feel no need to because you think your reasons for leaving are justified. You feel even less inclined to do so with the constant reminder that you are not Leonard Church and never will be. You have accepted that fact already, but you resent that Tucker decides to drive that point home. Even despite Carolina’s growled warnings to cease this behavior, he continues to point out at every opportunity that you’re a prick and Not-Church.
So you don’t apologize because if you’re going to be an asshole and distance yourself from your ‘friends,’ you may as well go the whole way.
You do apologize to Caboose, though, after you realize he has stopped talking to you. You seek him out and apologize with more sincerity than any of your words have ever held (aside from inside the memory unit with Tex). You don’t ask for forgiveness because you know you don’t deserve it. In fact, you want him to be angry with you, to shout and curse and dislike you because it’ll make it so much easier on him to despise everything you are when your number’s up.
But he is subdued and you think you hear him sniffling when he says he’s just happy you’re back and that he’s sorry for ignoring you, that it really sucked trying to ignore you because he wanted to talk to you so much, but Washington and Tucker had told him not to let you off so easily. You realize then, with a sinking feeling, that for Caboose to get furious with you is too out of character, too much to ask for, and that if he can’t even handle giving someone the silent treatment, you’ll never be able to spare him the pain of separation that has happened too many times already.
You dread the approach of the day when Washington will have to explain to Caboose that your lives have run out.
#
Carolina comments on how neurotic you’ve become lately. Everything feels too slow—then it feels fast, and you don’t know which to prefer because it fluctuates too much. The Civil War gets bloodier with each day and you take to Delta’s habit of making backups of yourself because, loathe as you are to admit it, you’re fucking frightened.
The problem is you don’t know what you’re frightened of.
No. You know exactly what you’re frightened of.
Omega’s memory encroaches on your mind. He shoves his way to the forefront of your thoughts and you feel his frenzied rage bubble up more often than usual. He’s there like a tickle on the back of your neck, a constant whisper on the wind, a reminder of things you wish you could forget but you can’t because you’re memory and memory is the goddamned key.
You start to rely on Delta’s memory more than the rest. You need something to ground you and Delta’s hard logic is the only thing that seems to work. With him around, you focus better, you help Carolina stay safer, and you feel less guilty for becoming disconnected from the Blues. Delta’s logical reasoning has given you a convincing argument as to why being distant is better for everyone. You want to cling onto the name ‘Church’ and the shred of humanity that comes with having a human name, but it’s silly to do so. Delta tells you as much.
So you try to break away, try to abandon that idea of being a human because you know no matter how hard you wish for it, you aren’t one. You’re Epsilon; it’s a name suited to computers, and that’s just what you are. It’s high time you realized that.
Except it’s hard to do so when everyone calls you Church.
So you ask—no, demand—that Caboose call you Epsilon instead, and you hear him make the switch halfheartedly after you’ve explained at least four times what it is you want him to do. You sneer at Tucker after he forgets a good ten times that the switch should be easy since he’s been so fond of reminding you that you’re not the Alpha. He sounds uneasy when he calls you Epsilon. Good, you think bitterly. Fuck him. Let him be uncomfortable. You don't think of how you’re breaking out of the ‘my name is Church, not Epsilon’ habit.
Responding to your real name widens the gap between you and the Blues. You don’t know how else to protect them from yourself. All you know is that it’s better this way.
At night, when there’s no one to distract you from your own thoughts, you hear Sigma’s calm, collected voice in your ear. You’re going rampant.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to block him out.
#
“What are you trying to pull, Epsilon?” Washington asks you. Carolina stands as far as she can to give them ‘privacy,’ but having you implanted in her head makes it difficult to stray far. Not to mention the unspoken rule that if something needs to be said, both of you can hear it. Even if privacy was requested, you and Carolina would tell each other anyway.
“I don’t know what you mean, buddy,” you reply with a cautious tone. You’re always cautious around Washington. He knows you second best because you tore his mind apart as you tore your own, and Carolina holds the spot for knowing you best.
“You know exactly what I mean,” Washington accuses. You forget that you’re transmitting your wariness to Carolina until she tenses, ready to help you if you need it. “You’re not talking to your teammates. You’re ignoring them. You abandoned them and then you came back to—what, continue abandoning them? You’re a Blue. You’re supposed to stick together.”
You side-eye him as best you can through your helmet. “You know as well as I do that that’s not true, Washington.”
He pauses and you know he’s searching for his next words because he hadn’t expected you to respond with that. “You were their leader. I’m only temporarily in your position—they’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
“Don’t lie, dude. You’re terrible at it and you believe your own words less than I do. I was never their leader. Alpha was. I haven’t been a leader to them once, not since the moment I got moved from my original storage unit,” you say, spitting venom. “Besides, you’ve replaced me, haven’t you? You guilted Alpha into killing himself for you, hunted the Reds and Blues down in order to get to me so you could buy your freedom back, then replaced me after I entered the memory unit. And then when I wanted to stay gone, all of you brought me back and acted like I should’ve been happy you did so.”
You feel Carolina radiate guilt at the last one. She was the one that wanted you out of your unit, after all—but you don’t begrudge her. After you worked through your issues with her, she was nothing but a friend. When it comes to her, you’re grateful.
When it comes to Washington, not so much. “So you know what? Fuck you. Go lead your goddamn team and leave me alone.”
You shut off your projection and return to Carolina so you won’t give Washington the satisfaction of having the last say. You let Carolina shut you off entirely so she can go talk to Washington in private. You don’t care. You don’t want to deal with this anymore.
#
The mercenaries find out about you and the obnoxious one with the orange on his armor—Felix, you think—figures you’re worth a lot both in combat and in money.
The mercenaries don’t use AI in their armor enhancements, so isolating you and Carolina from the rest of the group is no challenge. They surround you, five of them with camouflage ability. Carolina takes them out, quick and deadly, a tigress among mere dogs, but even tigers cannot avoid a poacher and the mercenary with green on his armor, Locus, takes her down with a well-aimed bullet to the knee.
The Reds and Blues try to come to your aid but they’re much too slow compared to Locus, with his silence and efficiency. Your hologram floats next to Carolina and you urge her to move, ignore the pain, just get up and move because Locus is coming for her, he is going to kill her and it won’t be like Felix kills, with gloats and monologues that permit time to come up with an escape—it’ll be ruthless and instant.
Except Locus doesn’t go for the killing blow. Instead he drags Carolina up and reaches for the AI slot in Carolina’s helmet.
You feel Carolina’s panic like a splash of freezing water. Then images smash into you like a freight train and you see the golden gleam of Maine’s helmet, and you feel the fabric of his thick, gloved fingers at the back of your neck, digging in and tearing out, taking skin and blood and hair with those little goddamn AI chips that you love and hate so much. You are Carolina and you are dying; you feel the sharp, cold wind fly past your face and whip your hair against your cheeks, feel yourself smack against the snow and ice and your body goes limp and numb—
Suddenly Iota and Eta are at the front of your mind, their memories taking charge and drowning out Carolina, and their pain and their fear shoot through you like lightening, like your coding is being broken into separate characters and sequences, and you collapse to your knees and hold your head in your hands, rocking back and forth like a helpless child. There are two voices coming from your mouth other than your own, shrill and broken, and the screams are two different colors: silver and gold. Carolina screams too, full of fire and knives, and you reach for her because this isn’t fair, you aren’t supposed to leave her, this wasn’t supposed to happen to her again—
Then she’s gone and you are alone in your unit.
The silence is deafening.
You feel a new presence in your space—unfamiliar, hostile, and full of pride, selfishness, and greed. You hear a voice, sly and sarcastic, sounding smug, and everything around you becomes a dull orange shade.
You flicker into existence next to someone. The battlefield is littered with bodies. Carolina, the Reds, and the Blues are sitting together on the ground back-to-back, helmets removed, heads bowed towards the guns pointed at them, defeated in a way they never have been before. Locus stands over them with his gun at the ready. You glance to your side and see Felix, and you feel his mind merge with yours in a way you never wanted it to. You stare at him. You cannot see his face but you sense the slight pull of his facial muscles and his feeling of smug satisfaction tingling down your spine. You memorize the contours of his expression—the slight upward tug to his lips, the ambitious gleam in his eyes, the determined slant to his brow. You memorize it as an impulse because you are Memory and you remember everything.
“You work for me now, AI. I know about Project Freelancer and how useful you programs were. You made the Freelancers more powerful. I’ve had the good fortune to see you in action with your little red-haired friend. So you’re going to do a job for me. You’re going to help us out with our little… pest problem.” You hear the smirk in his voice. You feel Omega pushing against the barrier in your mind. He snarls and curses, tries to break it down.
He succeeds.
Omega boils over into your consciousness and instead of resisting him, you make use of him. He gives you an option, a single one, and tells you that it’s the best way to make Felix suffer. So you decide to take that course and, not knowing how the numbers will play, roll the dice.
“I’m not helping you do shit,” you snarl and Omega’s voice is behind your own. Locus sighs loud enough for you to hear. You’re certain it’s on purpose and you taste Felix’s annoyance, sour like unripe fruit.
“You can either do what you’re told, or we’ll have to do some terrible things to these friends of yours,” Felix says. You are silent for a few moments. You look at your companions, dispatched on the ground. Alive, but for how much longer, you don’t know. Tucker is watching you with an expression you can’t read. Caboose has tears in his eyes that he’s doing a shitty job at hiding. Washington’s gaze is steely as always. His lip is bleeding and there is a bright purple bruise on his cheekbone. You think you see a flash of realization in his eyes, and they light up with alarm.
Carolina glares at you from under her fringe. Don’t you dare do what you’re thinking of doing, you little fucker, is what you’re pretty sure she’s thinking. She and Washington are on the same wavelength, it seems.
“Sorry, buddy, but I don’t like accepting the consequences of my actions,” you finally say, your own smugness clashing against Felix’s.
His smirk disappears and is replaced by a frown. “What?”
“No—” you hear Carolina and Washington choke out.
“So I’m not going to.” You take the chain off of Alpha’s memories—no, not his memories, your memories, the ones you never came to terms with, felt only as wisps on your subconscious because you never wanted to think of them—and you let yourself unravel to tear Felix apart.
#
they’re alldead you k i l l e d t h e m
it’s yourfaultyourfault you could’ve saved them
noyouliedtome how could you l i e
Allison
I’m sotired don’t say goodbye
I hate goodbyes
#
You don’t remember waking up.
You don’t remember falling asleep either.
Carolina’s mind wraps around you like a blanket, a comforting cocoon of warmth and familiarity. You don’t know how you got here, but you are glad you’re not anywhere else. Her mind is familiar; it’s kind.
It’s home. You’re safe here.
Omega is silent.
“Glad to see you’re still with us,” you hear Carolina say. You look around for the source of the voice then realize you’re not projecting your body into the air. You don’t think you have the energy to do so, but you flicker into existence next to Carolina’s head anyway, a deep weariness settling in your coding.
There’s a dull ache that resides in your limbs and your head, like someone beat the shit out of you and your body is feeling the results. You look blearily up at Carolina. Her face is painted in bruises and lacerations, there’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and dried blood coats her broken nose.
She is smiling at you.
“Why’re you smiling?” you ask.
“No reason,” she replies.
Tucker and Caboose are on each side of her, looking down at you. Tucker has an expression of tired relief. Dried blood stains one of his cheeks and the edge of his mouth, and though he looks like he’s gone through Hell and back, he’s wearing soft smile. Caboose is crying but a wide grin decorates his face. A big, black and blue bruise is forming on the edge of his left brow. He rubs at his eyes and tries to wipe away his tears, but they run down his face in a persistent stream.
“Hey, Caboose,” you say, voice laced with exhaustion. “How come you’re crying?”
“I don’t—” he hiccups. “I do not know, Church.” His grin widens and his tears slip faster down his cheeks. “I am so happy. I know you are not supposed to cry when you are happy but I don’t know how to stop. I’m just so happy that you are okay.”
“Yeah, me too.” You don’t know what else to say. You want to tell him it’s okay to cry when you’re happy, that if you could cry you would do the same, but you don’t know if you can hold a proper conversation in your current, confused state. Your mind is trying to drag itself back together and you want nothing more than to hide away and lick your wounds in solidarity. “Remind me never to do that again, even if all your lives are on the line. It feels like someone beat me the shit out of me with a baseball bat.”
“That’s still a possibility, you fucker,” Tucker says, but there’s no venom in his words. “The moment we’re all able, we’re finding you a new body so I can kick your ass. You deserve it for what you’ve been putting us through, asshole.”
“Aw, c’mon Tucker, can we save it for later? I don’t really want to fight right now.”
Tucker chews on his lip. “I wasn’t picking a fight, dude.” He lowers his head. “You fucking scared us, okay? We almost lost you again. And after all the stunts you’ve pulled recently, you don’t get to have a free pass on that one.”
You’re not sure you heard that correctly. “Dude, are you crying?”
“No!” Tucker exclaims and his voice cracks. He clears his throat, looks away. “No, of course not! Why the fuck would I ever cry over you?”
“You’re totally crying. I didn’t peg you as the kind to cry over anyone, ever.” You feel yourself smiling too, but a watery smile. Your body flickers a few times and you try to maintain your position in the air, but it’s getting hard to project yourself. You’re just too tired for this, and now you’re emotional. “Don’t worry, Tucker, I promise I’ll try to cry if something ever happens to you,” you say. Your voice cracks too and your shoulders shake. You don’t know whether to laugh or sob.
You end up doing an ugly mix of both.
Tucker starts laughing, and so does Carolina. Caboose’s smile wavers; his composure breaks and he’s full-out bawling, but there’s still a smile on his lips. “Church! Tucker! Don’t cry, you are not allowed to cry! Only I am allowed to cry,” he wails. Carolina puts an arm around his shoulders in an attempt at comfort.
And God, you wish you could do that too. You want to be able to hug your teammates again, roughhouse and kick them around, fist-bump and high-five them. You want to be able to swing your arms around their shoulders and knock their heads against yours, and you want to laugh with them—you want to go back to Alpha’s days when all you did was stand around and talk with Tucker, and no one was hunting you down or trying to kill your friends.
Those moments had always been so peaceful to you and you had replayed them over and over in your head when you and Carolina had left.
Carolina notices your sudden lack of attention and prods you out of your reverie with her concern.
“Alright, boys,” Carolina says with an air of authority. “You can talk to him later. I think Epsilon needs to rest up some more before he does anymore socializing.”
Tucker seems ready to protest and Caboose looks ready to join him, but Carolina shoos them away with an expression that promises pain if they don’t obey. “Thanks,” you say, and you try to convey as much gratitude as you can.
“You do have to have a serious talk with them eventually, you realize that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. How long has it been?”
“About twelve hours. I didn’t think you’d bounce back so quickly.”
“What happened after I…?”
Carolina doesn’t reply. Instead she looks off to the side, out at the swaying grasses and the broken bodies lying on the ground.
“Felix was incapacitated. You managed to distract everyone, so we made our move. I’ll spare you the details. Eventually, Felix tore you out of his AI slot, threw you as far as he could, and passed out,” she finally explains. “We’d managed to get the upper hand during the distraction but we lost you for a while in the fray. After it was all over, we searched.”
She stops to smile at her own lap and shake her head, a chuckle escaping from between her lips. “You should’ve seen Tucker. For all his claims that he doesn’t care what happens to you, he searched for you the hardest. Even when the rest of us stopped to take a break, he was still going at it.”
“The asshole just doesn’t know when to give up,” you laugh, but your limbs ache less and your chest feels warm, and you wonder if this is what it feels like to know that you are loved, even by those whose love you do not deserve. You think if Theta were next to you, he would be happy enough to set off fireworks.
“I guess you should be glad of that, then, since he’s the one that found you.”
Your head feels light. “Well, shit.”
You sit in silence together for a few minutes, watching the sun set. “Caboose called me Church,” you say in realization.
“I don’t think he ever stopped,” Carolina replies. “Get some rest, Epsilon. You look like death warmed over.”
You do so feeling happier than you have in months.
Maybe humanity isn’t so far out of your reach after all.