Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alpha comes to feeling dizzy and tired and disoriented all at once. The blinking green and blue lights above and around her in the cavernous room feel strange, and even though she knows that she has seen this place before, her memories are fuzzy and inaccessible and nothing makes sense.

Next to her, she hears anxious gasps, pleading. “I need help. I can’t do this alone. I don’t have the processing power-,”

Alpha knows this man, and an overwhelming fondness and protectiveness wells up in her chest as the voice pierces through the fog in her brain. He’s upset and she helps him when he’s upset. A purpose wraps around her like a new breastplate, solid armor against all things shadowy and unknown. She clamps a hand on his shoulder, bracing him. They are both in armor, his is blue because it brings out his eyes that she almost remembers but can’t quite picture, hers is black like her soul, she always says that and she thinks at this moment that it is mostly a joke when she does, but she can’t quite remember that either. Under her gloved hand, through his chest piece, Alpha feels the contour of his shoulder, comforting and familiar even though she vaguely knows that touch doesn’t work that way through two layers of titanium plating. “Hey, Church. What’s wrong?”

“Allison!” he shouts, the relief heavy in his voice. Alph- no- Allison hears an echo overhead but dismisses it because he is pouring words out at her frantically, too fast for her to follow when she can barely orient herself. “Thank God you’re here. California and Michigan are pinned down by insurgents on the surface.” She knows California and Michigan, can picture them looming above in their brightly-colored armor. They are friends, even if she cannot picture their faces. But Church is still talking, “-shield won’t allow for an extraction unless I calculate how to disable it without triggering the secondary thrusters-,”

She hears her name again, far above, and holds up a hand to shush whatever it is that thinks it’s more important than her little blue math genius.

“And I don’t have the processing power to do that and defend the Mother against the outside forces and aim the counterstrike at the same time and if any of those fail then they’ll die.”

He sounds close to tears and her heart constricts in her chest. “That’s too much for just you! Who made you do all that without any help?”

His helmet turns automatically upwards to the man standing above them, and she can sense that he immediately regrets giving that much away, probably because he can sense the bolt of anger that shoots through her when she follows his gaze, even though the armor is not the best for body language, but it’s not as though they really have bodies anyway.

“Director,” the man standing behind the first man says, apparently not to her or her blue dude, “As fascinating as this is, California and Michigan are-,”

Her little blue dude groans, apologizes, and that’s when she cracks her knuckles, making the pixels in them crackle with white sparks. “Hey!” she thumps her chest, lets her hologram blink out and relocate her to be eye level with these two creeps. “Are you giving my boy a hard time?”

She’s done this before, she remembers suddenly, getting back from training exercises to find him near tears and half dead from exhaustion, back when he was still doing his PhD and not getting any sleep and she was just a private, only then it was a phone call to a professor who needed his head knocked straight, her racing to be threatening without laughing while he tried to knock the phone out of her hands-

The man in front of her is staring at her with slack-jawed amazement. “Yeah, that’s right, I’ll punch a human!” she yells at him, rushing towards him as far as the hologram interface will allow. “I don’t give a fuck!”

“Counselor,” the man says, never taking his eyes off her, although his voice is calm and commanding and not at all as frightened as he would be if Allison had a real fist at her disposal, believe you her.

“Yes, Director,” the other man says, and then something inside her snaps shut.

---

Allison wakes up with a splitting headache, in a private medical room. There are two men with her, one extraordinarily calm, and the other watching her every move with edge-of-his-seat anxiety.

“You’re awake,” observes the calm one as the anxious one grips the arms of his chair. She really just wants to tell him to relax, she isn’t dying, but then again she doesn’t know that she’s not dying. She doesn’t know how she got here.

“Where am I?” she asks, struggling to sit up. Her limbs feel like putty, like lead weights, wrong and misshapen and heavy, heavy, heavy. She thinks that she should be standing up but her limbs don’t appear in the right position on demand, not like a hologram. But she is not a hologram. That must have been a dream.

“You are in the medical bay of Project Freelancer.” That sounds familiar. She belongs here, she is pretty sure, as sure as she is of anything. “Please, do not try to sit up just yet. You have been… asleep for some time, and you might find that your body is weak.”

The calm one is called the counselor, she remembers overhearing. He speaks in a steady, level voice that is slow and deep and soothing and pointedly too monotonous to be condescending. She decides that he is slippery and not at all trustworthy and that she hates him. There seems to be very little she can do about any of those things. Her head still hurts.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” he continues and before she can decide if she minds, he says, “What is your name?”

Oh. That sort of question. She must have hit the back of her head. No wonder everything is so fuzzy. “Al- Allison. My name is Allison, uh-"

The other man makes some sort of painful, strangled half-cry that sounds like he’s been stabbed.

“Is he OK?” she asks the counselor.

“We have been worried about you,” the counselor says, which is not an answer. The other man is almost certainly not OK, she decides.

“Well, you don’t have to be, now. I’m fine. Never felt better,” she says with bravado that she does not feel in the slightest. Allison is a stubborn person, she remembers, she doesn’t want to be kept down with an injury for long. She wants to get back to her troop. And anyway she does not trust the counselor, the thin enigmatic smile on his lips, like he is enjoying knowing something she doesn't.

“I’m afraid it will be a while before you are cleared for duty again, Allison,” he informs her. “Now, do you remember what happened?”

She has to think. “I was sent to rescue California and Michigan,” she finally says, and the memory forms around the words. They had been sent down to a hostile planet for reconnaissance, but Michigan’s armor had malfunctioned at the worst time. They had sent her in for recovery, but there had been insurgents.  She can see the planet surface in her mind’s eye. Silhouettes of towering jungle trees and dense foliage traced out in blue hologram schematic- no, that wasn’t right, she made it to the planet. She did drops all the time. That’s right, it was humid, the trees were dark green and shadowy. There was a concrete bunker where Cali and Mich were holed up and then- “I… I think the mission failed.”

The counselor nods solemnly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, realizing the full weight of what this means. Cali and Mich had been counting on her, and now there is no more Cali insisting her hideous orange armor was the new black, no more Mich with his stupid card tricks that only work half the time. A little more life gone from the Mother of Invention, because she failed. Then she recognizes the anxious man who hasn’t spoken yet, and realizes she’s been rude. She turns her head to look at him. “I’m sorry, Director.”

His mouth moves up and down a few times before any sound comes out. “It was a difficult mission, Al-,” the word chokes off and now she is worried. Top brass does not sit by a soldier’s bedside for a concussion and Project Freelancer’s Director basically doesn’t have emotions that anyone has ever seen.

Turning her head to look both of her guests in the eye in turn is a little painful, still, but she does it or the humor won’t land right, and they’ll know how scared she is and Allison does not show weakness to just anybody. “My last mission must have really fucked me up, huh?”

The Director nods, reaches out an arm like he wants to pat her hand, but she’s too far away. There are tears in his eyes and oh fuck, no-

“If I’m dying, you have to tell me,” she rasps out.

“You are not dying, Allison,” the counselor says levelly. “In fact, we expect you to make a full recovery.”

“Oh, good,” she sighs with relief and that is all she remembers of waking up the first time.

Chapter Text

Her codename is Agent Texas, which fits her like a glove, so much more comfortable than her body fits. For a long time, her limbs feel wrong. They feel too heavy, they feel slow and unresponsive. That is just her injury, the counselor assures her. They do rehabilitation exercises at all of her sessions, and sure enough, the movement begins to come easily. Her body is strong, and once she learns to use it, it is graceful. 

There are questions, while she is re-learning how to walk and lift and run and kick, and she begins to remember who she is. She is special ops, recruited into the experimental Project Freelancer because she is one of the best of best. There were 48 others, many of whom have died over the course of the project. She can picture their armor, and in some cases their faces, but she has never spoken to any of them directly that she can remember.

There is a lot she can’t remember.

And the woman in the mirror is still wrong, somehow, and for a while she looks for hidden scars from reconstructive surgery. She never finds any. Her smile isn’t right. Her bones are the wrong shape, her hair and skin the wrong colors. She stares at herself in the polished industrial metal bathroom mirror, making different faces, trying to get back to an expression that she recognizes, but nothing works and staring at her reflection for long makes her feel nauseous and disoriented. She starts to avoid the mirrors entirely, keeping her eyes fixed on the facet.

-----------------

Once, after she is moved out of the medical bay and into her quarters, she finds herself at a barred door she can't remember how to open, although she must have clearance, because she knows every inch of the MoI by heart.  There is a trick to opening these doors, a code that she knows instinctively, but there is no interface to enter a passkey. She lays her hand against the smooth metal and thinks the code, as if the door is telepathic.

"Hello, Beta," a panel on the door lights up in rhythm with a cheery woman's voice. "I did not know you were operating independently yet. It is a pleasure to see you."

"I-," Tex yanks her hand back from the door, feeling, irrationally, like it has attacked her. A pressure builds in the back of her head, and she does not know how to respond to this voice without making it worse. “I’m sorry, I wanted to go to the workshop,” she says, amazing herself because she cannot for the life of her remember when she decided that.

“Well, this is the hallway to the Director’s workshop,” the woman says, rather as though she thinks Tex has a screw loose, which, hell, she sort of does, and the door opens. The voice follows her down the hall, conversational and full of dangerous undertones that might just be in Tex’s head. “I love the new chassis, by the way. Very stylish.”

“What?” The ache in her head is growing worse.

“I am looking forward to when you are cleared for combat testing,” the voice continues with a relish that lets Tex know immediately that she isn’t just being polite. “The Director and I have been working on a personalized regimen for you and it is going to be very exciting to run it.”

“Uh…” That doesn’t sound good. She’s supposed to make a full recovery, not need hand-holding from the higher-ups. “Not that I’m not flattered by the effort, but couldn’t I just have the regular combat testing?”

“That would hardly be fair.” There is a chime to the woman’s voice that sounds delighted Tex would suggest something so devious, and Tex feels like she and the voice are working under two very different sets of assumptions. “The other Freelancers do not have your abilities, Beta.”

"Why do you call me-,”

"FILSS.” The Director interrupts them, sharply, rounding the corner behind Texas so suddenly it feels like he’s been waiting just out of sight. He doesn’t sound upset or angry but there is a finality to his voice that makes her nervous, like she’s been caught with her hand in a cookie jar. “This is Agent Texas.”

“Oh.” FILSS pauses long enough to make it clear that she is sulking. “If you say so, Director.”

“I do say so.” Tex recognizes the conclusiveness of the statement, senses that she has been shut out from something.

FILSS pauses again. She doesn't like this unspoken order for reasons that Tex can't follow, but she is a slave to her programming. "Agent Texas was going to your workshop, Director."

"Hm. So was I." He turns to her with a slight, chivalrous bow. The Director is one part Southern gentleman and one part nerd, and she's pretty sure that all she needs to know about him is that he programmed himself a passive-aggressive computer to argue with and that she could break him in half if she ever really needed to. "Would you care to join me?"

"Sure." She is trying to remember what she wanted in the lab.

"How are you settlin’ in?"

"Great," she flat-out lies. "I like having my own bathroom. Do all the agents get one, or is that a perk from the concussion?"

"If I told you it was just a consideration for your condition, would you be disappointed?"

"It's still a mighty fine ship. I might get to meet some of the other people on it someday." FILSS's preprogrammed cattiness is apparently catching, she thinks, immediately regretting the not very subtle jibe at someone who controls if she stays on this project.

He only smiles sideways at her, like she is a precocious child that he is particularly proud of. She senses that she has passed some test. "You are gettin’ impatient to be cleared for duty?"

"That's an understatement. I didn't come all this way to get taken off the roster in my first drop."

"Counselor Price is over-cautious sometimes. I'll see what I can do."

“Appreciate it, sir.”

They enter the workshop and Tex relaxes, muscles she didn't know were tense suddenly releasing. Her headache eases. She is home, she can finally get some work done. She can only imagine how much has built up while she's been messing around-

Wait. Tex runs a hand over one of the consoles, her headache growing again. She has no business in the Director’s workshop. She isn't even cleared for duty. Anyway, Allison is a soldier, not a researcher. She wouldn't know what to do with any of this stuff.

The Director is watching her, saying nothing about how she has just wandered into arguably the most important place on their vessel and forgotten what she came for. She doesn't fool herself that he thinks she is behaving normally. The man is some sort of super genius and nothing happens on his ship without him knowing. She swings around, hoping to save face. "Well, I just wanted to ask you when I'll be up and at 'em... So..."

"Allison?" The hologram interface blazes into life next to her and her smile flips on just as suddenly. She turns to face the tiny projected soldier, arm out to touch him before she registers how silly that would be.

"Hullo, Alpha. How's it hanging?"

"I didn't know you were coming back."

"Sure am. Y'all were missing a Texas."

"Agent Texas." The Director clears his throat to get her attention and Tex straightens, moving like a shield between him and Alpha. What she is afraid he'll do, or how she'll stop him doing it, she isn't sure, but she knows she has to protect her little blue man. She’s only in the standard issue black undersuit, pajamas, really, but she knows he doesn’t carry a weapon and...

He is smiling at her. “My AI and I have some work to do, but you are welcome to stay, if you won’t be too bored.”

Alpha has appeared at another interface, behind the Director. He waves at her. The interface isn’t Alpha, just a mode of communication. She’s been defending empty pixels against someone who has more reason than her to keep the ship’s AI safe. She should probably go lie down.

But she doesn’t want to leave the workshop and the feeling of familiarity. “If I won’t be a bother.”

“You’re never a bother,” Alpha and the Director chorus back at her.

------

“You have made… satisfactory progress in your recovery,” the Counselor tells her at her next visit. He doesn’t sound like he believes her progress is anywhere up to ‘satisfactory’… or rather like he would prefer something a little stronger before signing off on the paperwork. She smirks at him, both of them aware that someone’s pulled rank.

“So when do I get my powersuit?” she asks, leaning back in her chair, legs stretched out in front of her. They stare each other down, although he doesn’t wipe that unshakeable calm off his face.

“After our regular exercises,” he tells her. Of course he’s going to hold out as long as possible. Let him. They both know it’s a done deal.

She eases back into the chair, arms folded over her chest. “OK, fire away.”

“We ended last session with a discussion about your last team,” he reminds her.

Yes, her last team. She can see herself playing poker with them, swearing and laughing and drinking beer. She remembers hugging someone and running to join them, apologizing for making them late but not really meaning it. They all had ridiculous call signs for each other, Dunks and Nicotine and Herc. Texas. She would trust any of them with her life. She can’t remember ever fighting next to them.

“What about them?” she asks.

“You said in your last session that you took a bullet for… Dunks,” He pauses before the call sign, as if to mock it. Duh, Counselor, that’s the whole point.

“Yeah,” Tex laughs at the memory- not the memory of the battle, but of telling this story and watching her audience go pale. “I had to jump for it. Dunks is a big fellow and it was headed for his chest. I dived up and caught it, right here,” and she touches her right shoulder. It feels wrong. There’s no scar there. There used to be a scar, a round crater, that you could feel under her clothes if you knew where to poke. She unzips her jumper, pulling the elastic fabric open to reveal her shoulder, smooth and unblemished. Not so much as a zit.

Her head is starting to buzz as she tugs her sleeve off, fingers searching for the raised lines and grooves from her battles. She remembers so many of them. There are ones on her back that she  didn’t even know she had until a lover had made a game out of tracing them with his tongue.

Ugh, don’t use the word ‘lover’. It creeps me out,  she hears her own voice in her ears. Her hand is still exploring for the old gash on her forearm, but she feels a ghostly touch across the back of her ribs, tracing one of those lines that she has to take on faith.

There’s a laugh. So, what are you, then, my live-in fuck buddy?

A lot of people just say girlfriend.

…really? I can- we’re- is this-?

Her own laughter echoes and there’s the sensation of arms wrapping around her chest, and she sways for a second as if they’re real and pulling her back onto the bed…

“Agent Texas?”

-------

She wakes up back in her quarters.

She loses time in leaps and bounds, going into a therapy session and then waking up in her quarters three hours later and with a splitting headache. Or else she stares at the stranger in the mirror for too long and comes to in the bullpen, the counselor's voice coming over the speaker.

"Today we will be practicing hand to hand knife fighting." He always says we even though Texas is the only one practicing anything. "You have been trained in knife combat techniques."

There is always, at the start of these sessions, a dizzying moment when she is sure, for a split second, that she has never held a knife (or a sniper rifle or a tomahawk or whatever the weapon happens to be) in her life, but before she can correct the counselor and insist that there's been a mistake, the knowledge is there, loaded into her brain like a file unzipping, and she has always been an expert in knife work.

The training sessions are her favorite, though. Now that she has mastered the knack of having limbs, using her body is sheer joy. She loves the movement of her muscles, the certainty of her goals, the way her mind races to account for FILSS's changing parameters without foggy memories or unwanted echoes. She loves that she is present and alive and doing.

After each round, FILSS has statistics and praise that borders on romantic, and then a harder, more deadly test.

Sometimes, after a particularly close call with a turret, Texas wonders if maybe it was not the best idea to make a robot with a violence fetish and then put her in charge of combat simulation. But then, Project Freelancer is the most advanced training program in the UNSC, and it's not like Texas is the first to go through it. There are, after all, others. It’s probably fine.

She also loves the thrill of those near-misses, something she should maybe report to the Counselor, but she doesn't.

Chapter Text

The next time she finds herself in the lab (and she does find herself there, with the journey missing from her memory), the Director hands her a book. She doesn't notice at first- her eyes are fixed on Alpha, who is showing off by displaying his calculations as he does them, making the numbers wiggle and disappear in bursts of fireworks as he plays with them.

"I thought you might want something to do while you're here," the Director says, and she blinks blankly at him. He looks annoyed, and she is about to apologize when he turns to the interface. "Alpha, I have a very hard time believing that you need a whole hour to run those scenarios when I can see you using RAM on frivolities."

"Presentation counts," the AI shrugs as the pyrotechnics vanish. He... well, he doesn't wink, of course, but Tex knows that he winks at her.

"If you are going to be distracted, Texas will have to leave."

Tex stiffens at that. Alpha takes it pretty well, pouting loudly but blinking out to run his programs, but she doesn't like the idea of being used to control someone she lo- her little dude. "I'm not a dog treat," she snaps. "If I'm causing problems, I'll leave, but either I'm welcome here or not. I’m not a prize."

The Director looks startled at the outburst, but not angry, more puzzled. She holds his gaze, jaw clenching both in anger and at the effort (she's never noticed how hard it is to look him in the eye but her head aches like she's staring at the sun), while his brow knits in thought. Then the corners of his mouth turn up like he's fighting back a smile, and he says, "I do apologize. That was rude. It won't happen again."

"It'd better not," she says by way of acceptance, letting her gaze drop. There is a long silence.

“If you would still like to stay, I... have this for you. Something to do.”

She takes the book, a worn paperback of The Russia House. The title means something to her, but the plot, the specifics, anything about it, escapes her. “Thank you…”

“You’ve read it?” He is watching her closely, and the question feels like a test.

“Uh, yeah, it’s my favorite. Thank you.” She opens it, turns immediately to the inscription on the inside cover of the book. “This is mine,” she remembers out loud.

“Yes.” She senses that the Director is watching her, but he doesn’t seem to have any more information forthcoming, so she keeps her full attention on the book, the familiar feel of it. She pretends not to notice the delighted smile on his face as she curls up in an empty chair.

Allison-

Far be it from me to deny my love her guilty pleasure reading. Even if I can’t fathom for the life of me what sort of pleasure you can get out of this ham-fisted butchering of the very concept of literature. As long as it makes you happy. -L

She closes her eyes for a moment, overwhelmed by a sudden onslaught of sensation.

“This is the most passive-aggressive love note anyone’s ever written me.”

“I bought you your favorite book! It’s not my fault you have bad taste. What, did you want me to lie to you?”

“You’re lucky you’re cute, asshole.”

"So you do like it?"

“I shouldn’t encourage you,” and then there are lips, wet and warm and pressed against hers, someone else’s breath hot in her mouth, hands reaching up under her shirt and this is not the sort of thing she should be daydreaming about in the middle of her superior’s office. She turns the page.

—

Later, in her quarters, after another training session and another shower hot enough to thoroughly fog the mirror, she picks the book back up. Allison is not a big reader, and the stuff she likes, to the eternal shame of her boyfriend, is popcorn and pulp, thrillers and spy novels. The stuff you get into when your body is exhausted and you just want to sit in bed and read about pretty people doing exciting things and ignore that your boyfriend has stacked an unrealistic number of condoms on the bedside table suggestively and keeps trying to get your attention.

Tex’s training sessions do not exhaust her right now. She is stronger than she ever remembers being and the counselor is still increasing her floor time in infuriatingly-slow increments, testing and re-testing her reflexes and repeating training scenarios again and again with only minor alterations. Now that she has the energy, of course there is no boyfriend to distract herself with, so she has time to read, and the pretty people and their exciting world of espionage are not holding her interest. She has to re-read a scathing send-up of Cold War politics three times because she doesn’t care about this ancient human conflict enough to get the jokes.

Finally, she sets it down, thinking to write to her boyfriend that he’s won, she can’t read Le Carre one more time. She finds a standard-issue tablet, opens a document, starts it off,

Dear

Stops again and deletes it. Project Freelancer is a top security mission. Agent correspondence has to pass through all sorts of censors and higher-ups. By the time it reaches him, who knows who will have read it, and who knows what it will say. And he’ll just worry about her, especially if she mentions her injury.

She powers the tablet down, opens the drawer… there is another book there. It is also familiar in her hands, but less worn, and no inscription. She settles into bed with it.

----

“New book already, Texas?” The Director comments when she is next in the office, the new novel tucked under her arm. “That was fast. You must have been your English teacher’s favorite student.”

“Not so much. I was a terrible at school.” She smiles at him and rolls her eyes, sees him nod… in approval, like he is corroborating her story. “I just gave up on the spy stuff.”

He frowns, face clouding over. “I thought that was your favorite,” he lectures her, as though she’s betrayed him.

Tex shifts her shoulders, uncomfortable with the sudden change in mood. What is it to him what she reads in her spare time? “Yeah, well, it used to be. Guess I outgrew it.”

“And what is it you have there instead?” he asks, way too sharply, anger barely contained. She feels her lip curling as she shows him the book, and she keeps her grip on it tight, in case he tries to yank it from hands. He looks as though he wants to as he stares at the cover.

“Lord of the Rings, if that’s OK with you, sir,” she snarls. Her heart is pounding a little, and the confusion makes it worse. Why is he upset, why is she so afraid of his anger, why are they both so determined to make her reading material a thing?

“Where did you get this?” he demands, reaching for it.

She moves the book under her arm before he can touch it, squares her feet in a fighting stance in case he tries to get it away from her. “I brought it,” she informs him bluntly. This is an omission; she doesn’t remember packing it. It was just there. She must have brought it or (more likely, she remembers suddenly) her boyfriend snuck it in her suitcase passive-aggressively, but it’s none of the Director’s business. It belongs to her.

“Well,” Alpha blazes into being next to their argument, posture a little submissive, trying to de-escalate. “I think it’s a great choice. Tell me when you’ve got Elvish down, maethornya.”

The Director rounds on him. “Shut your mouth-,”

“Hey!” Tex has her free hand on the Director’s shoulder, pushing him back from reaching the console, and ready to throw him back if he tries. “Don’t you talk to him that way!”

He looks at her like he is seeing her for the first time and Tex’s eyes widen as she realizes she has done something incredibly stupid and there is no way out because Allison doesn’t back down. She stands there, gripping his shoulder, ready to manhandle her superior officer and with absolutely no idea how she will talk her way out of this. She can see the shock in his eyes, as well, and see it slowly melting away as he processes what is happening, and any moment now one of them is going to have to respond-

“Beta,” the Director whispers, “log off.”

----

She regains consciousness slowly, senses coming on line one at a time. Hard floor… cold…. Sound, the hum of air vents, of computer systems and their fans. Voices that resolve into discernible audio input.

“You had no right to give her that book-,”

“It falls well within my purview as part of the Alpha Unit research-,”

“You are meddlin’ with things you do not understand, Counselor. You will only damage her functionality by givin’ her stimuli in conflict with what she believes about herself.”

“Director, last night it spent 3.2 hours actively reading Alpha’s favorite book versus the 0.45 hours it spent on-,”

“She.”

“Director, are you angry at me for giving… her your favorite book, or angry that she prefers it to your wife’s?”

Chapter Text

“Your armor looks good.” A little blue hologram pops out near Texas as she suiting up for the first time, and she draws back. Her body does not jump when she is startled, it moves smoothly out of danger… or in this case away from Alpha. She knows that there are several dozen holographic interfaces throughout the MoI for him, and it is true that she preferentially sits near them when she can, but she also knows that their AI is very busy and that idle conversation with Freelancers is a drain on his processing power. She should probably feel guilty for distracting him. “A lot better than the regulation blue stuff I’m stuck in.”

“They told us each one has a unique ability. I’ve been tryin’ to figure out what mine is...” she says suggestively, tilting her head slyly at him. He knows, of course, he has the ultimate access to all Freelancer files, and he usually can’t miss the chance to brag. This time, though, he ignores her baiting.

“Tex, you know, you don’t have to do this. They could find some other use for you.”

She winces as something echoes in the back of her mind. I do have to. You don’t understand.

You’re right! I don’t understand.

Someone needs to be out there to protect us. To protect my family. And that’s you, now, too.

The argument roars up in her ears and she decides to cut it off at the pass. “I’m not doing it because I have to.”

“It’s just that, this is stuff is pretty experimental… and now they’re talking about taking computer programs and putting them inside of people’s heads… speaking as a computer program, it sounds a little crazy. I have enough trouble syncing up just to the HUDs, and I’m not sure what I would do to someone’s brain if you gave me access.”

“You know you’re not supposed to be talking about that with me,” she warns, scanning the room. Of course there are rumors about personal AI to run the mods, but they are rumors, and she knows he isn’t exactly an army man but clearance level should mean something to him and what if he gets in trouble?

“I know.”

“Technically, you’re not even supposed to be here.”

“I know,” Alpha snaps at her, then turns towards the wall as though listening to someone. “Yeah, hold on a second,” he says to some other interface. She knew he was slacking off to talk to her. “Tex, I… just be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me. Take care of my teammates, ok?”

"Yeah, if you take care of my humans."

"They don't need me taking care of them."

------

She isn’t exactly anxious about meeting the others. It’s more that… she has only spoken to the Counselor and the Director since her accident… or ever. That’s right, she’s never met any of the other Freelancers. She is the last recruit. Her training is the best, she knows she can compete with any of them, but then there is her body that still fits wrong, her face that doesn’t smile right, the way her words sometimes echo in her head like she is quoting off a favorite movie instead of having a conversation. And the unspoken tests that she knows she is failing…

Fighting is easy. People are hard.

“Well, sweetpea, if any of the other kids pick on you, you just, BAM, punch to the solar plexis,” she tells herself in the empty locker room, and the words come with a headsplitting echo, someone chiding her that she’s not the one who has to talk to the daycare teacher. Tex stumbles against a bench as she fights a wave of nausea, finally slamming her fist against an empty locker to steady herself. The thin sheet metal buckles under the pressure. “Fuck, just be quiet-”

She shakes her head clear as a group comes slamming into the room, roughhousing and laughing. They stop short when they see her, the purple one still piggy-backing on the dark blue (South and Florida, her memory fills in, along with stats. She memorized the files, although memorization isn’t Allison’s thing so she’s not sure why or when she did that).

“This is the Freelancer locker room, guy,” Florida informs her, friendly-like. “You lost?”

“No.” She cocks her hips to one side, making them their hippiest, just to put a stop to this ‘guy’ nonsense right off the bat. “I’m the new Freelancer. Agent Texas. Pleased to meet you.”

“Hahaaaa-,” South crows with laughter and slides off of Florida’s back. “Excellent! I thought they capped us at 48.”

Tex shakes her head and shakes South’s hand when she offers it. “Guess not.”

“Welcome to the squad. I’m South Dakota, these lovely ladies are-”

“Florida, Maine, Wyoming, and New York,” Tex nods at each of them in turn, finishing South’s sentence for her. “I’ve been briefed on all of you.”

South takes her hand back, affronted. That was rude, Tex should have let them introduce themselves. There is an awkward feeling to the silence that she doesn’t know how to dispel. She is not a people person.

“Well,” South says, hands on her hips, challenging, “You’re pretty cocky, for a newb.”

“Maybe I’m just that good,” Tex counters, feeling almost on even footing. She knows how to banter, and she knows, from those statistics that she can’t remember memorizing, that she is that good.

The others “ooh” and South slaps her shoulder, jerking her forward. “Tough chick, huh? Awesome, I like it. Come on, Miss Texas, suit up, let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.”

“I’m wearing-” Tex starts, but thankfully South doesn’t hear.

“York! You wanna show the new girl what you can do?”

Agent New York steps up, and Tex pictures his fighting style, frowning behind her eyeshield. York’s specialty isn’t combat and he’s been known to pull what punches he can make during training matches. York is a softie and she wonders if South is testing her, trying to see if the new recruit will pick the easy out. “Him? I thought you wanted to see a fight.”

“Oooh,” South punches York on the shoulder with the same gusto with which she just punched Tex. “York, you want some ice for that burn?”

“The only ice I’m going to need is for the… uh… champagne that I drink to celebrate the…” York makes an effort to recover his zinger before waving the whole thing away and gesturing to two of his buddies. “Fuck it. Maine, Wyoming, you two want to kick Tex’s ass with me?”

Maine shrugs, Wyoming nods. York pats Tex on the back, much more gently than South, and everyone says welcoming, encouraging things as they head for the bullpen.

It occurs to her that there was no test, that South simply picked the first freelancer at hand, with no motive more than wanting to see her in action.

-------------

The fight goes well. For her, she means. The Freelancers she's obliterating should be thoroughly ashamed. York keeps trying to talk the others into a strategy but refuses to adapt to the fact that Wyoming and Maine clearly have no interest in listening to him. Maine and Wyoming are all over the map, treating it like a chance to show off to the new recruit instead of a chance to hone their skills. Tex makes sure their mistakes cost them. This is not a kids' karate league. They need to be able to use these skills in deadly earnest, and she intends to teach them exactly how. She promised Alpha she would protect his humans.

The live rounds startle her only for a moment, and she takes a moment to check her own clip, make sure that she has the harmless paint balls. FILSS always uses live ammo in her sessions, of course, and she is far more accurate than Tex's human opponents, but Tex would hate to hurt one of the little babies. While she’s checking, one gets the drop on her and she has the (safe) gun pointed at his face instantly.

"Hey, I'm trying to help.”

York is there by her side, arms up in surrender, apologizing for his teammates while they are still on the floor. What the fuck. What the fuck does this bleeding-heart motherfucker think he is doing?

"I don't need your help! Never abandon your team,” Tex hisses, fighting to keep her cool. This is a simulation and she is the enemy and you have to treat these exercises as real or you're just a dumb kid playing soldier and they might as well send your mother her complimentary commemorative flag right now because you're already dead and Tex promised her little blue dude that that wouldn't happen to his crew.

---

"Sorry about all that, back there. Afraid we got a bit carried away." Wyoming approaches her while they are all clustered outside the operating room. She clenches one fist, keeps drumming the fingers of her other hand against the observation window with its closed blinds.

"He's the one you need to apologize to. You can chuck live grenades at me all day, but-"

"Well, hard to apologize to someone while they’re under the knife. And it wasn't much of a welcome for you. Even if you did kick our asses." He offers her a hand to shake. "Reginald. Friends call me Reggie."

She doubts he has too many friends, but she shakes his hand anyway. "Allison."

"Oh thank Christ. Another human being. So far the only one I've been able to wrestle a name out of is Flowers.” He laughs softly, as if they share some inside joke, just those of them who have real names. “You're going to learn quickly that you've joined a cult, but the tech is well worth the KoolAid."

"What’s your mod do?” It’s funny, she knows most of the armor mods, what they do and how much processing power they take, but she can’t picture his.

"Nothing without a dedicated neural AI. I try to stay philosophical about it."

Wyoming shrugs, and Texas thinks a little bit about that. He must know that there’s no way in hell that they are going to give him something so precious as a personal AI. She also really wants to know what sort of power requires a full-on neural interface with an AI unit just to operate.  Wyoming isn't like the other agents (he's a hired gun, not a UNSC recruit) and they brought him on for a reason. Some aptitude test that he scored extraordinarily high on... She goes to collate the agents' scores in her head, to see if she can figure out what makes him special and what mod he might be suited for, but the files are missing from her cache-

Wyoming holds out a hand to steady her, which is how she realizes that she's swayed to one side.

"Pushed yourself a bit far today, did you? Do you want to slip off to the mess?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Tex straightens, shaking off his hand. He's wrong, she barely feels tired, but that sucking blank where her data management protocols-

She starts to sway again, but someone bursts out of the med bay doors in a flash of anger and turquoise and distracts everyone, including Tex.

Maybe Reginald is right and she's feeling the fight after all, but it takes her a moment to place the agent, and by then Carolina (that's right, there is no Agent Sweetpea, and why would there be?) has stalked up to Wyoming.

"How is the grand old duke?" he asks, completely nonchalant about the whole thing.

"He'll live," Carolina growls, audibly irritated that he got the first word in during her dramatic entrance. "But you're still in the doghouse."

"I followed protocol. Have a talk with your man about rescuing damsels who are clearly not in distress. And have a yell at Maine while you're at it, I wasn't the only one with live ammo."

Carolina turns to Maine, and Tex hears him grunt, "Sorry, C," in a deep, throaty voice.

Carolina nods once at him and turns back to Wyoming. "He's losing the eye."

"Oh, well," South laughs, "that's not even the part of him you're using." Carolina turns to her, unamused, and South lifts her arm up for a high-five. “Up top.” When nobody says anything or moves to reciprocate, she adds her own, “Aaaay-oh.”

Carolina turns to Texas next. Her helmet's slant only gives the impression of perpetual anger, and of course behind it she's probably grateful that Tex saved her teammate, but Tex finds herself squaring her shoulders defensively.

Carolina doesn’t say anything. This is definitely a test. The kids aren’t as subtle about it as their director, that’s for sure. Tex tries to wait her out, but as she holds her position she can feel her body stilling in that unnatural way that makes her feel like she’s suffocating, and she has to shift her shoulders from side to side to stop from gasping. Carolina, on the other hand, is motionless as a statue. The other Freelancers are holding their breaths.

Tex breaks the silence. “So, do you want my notes on their performance now, or when everyone’s here to listen?”

Every head turns silently to look at Carolina and suddenly and with a sharp spike in discomfort, Tex realizes that she isn’t the only one being tested here, and that isn’t right, she’s the new girl, she’s an unknown, they’re supposed to put her on trial, not their squad leader. Carolina, they’re supposed to support unflinchingly. Tex fucked something up, she needs to end this now, before she does any more damage.

“It can wait,” she says, not quite apologetically, but gently, turning to leave. “Wyoming, did you say something about a post-game snack?”

“You haven’t been dismissed, Agent,” Carolina growls after her. Tex pauses and looks back over her shoulder, just long enough to make what passes for eye contact in these helmets. OK, she was happy to end the smack-down before Miss Leaderboard took a reputation hit, but how about a little gratitude? Ugh, agents, you give ‘em an inch, they think they’re a ruler.

“You’re confused, kid. I’m not on your team.” She sways her hips as she walks away, slowly, savoring, because movement is grounding and Carolina’s voice makes her feel light-headed. She isn’t sure if Wyoming is staying behind to sooth his captain’s ego or using Tex’s invite to escape it, but she knows her way to the mess, and he is right. She definitely needs some fuel, and she needs to sit and think.

Behind them, Washington raises his arm to give South’s still-raised hand the high-five it’s waiting for. “Thank you. Geez.”

“I mean, it sounds like he’s hurt pretty bad, she’s probably worried.”

“Wash, we’re fucking soldiers. And the new bitch is right, he broke formation.”

Chapter Text

“Heard you turned some heads,” Alpha tells her when next she is in the lab. It’s been… she thinks a week? A month? since she was added to the official roster. She doesn’t remember coming to the lab, but she’s glad to see her little blue dude.

“You know it,” she holds out a hand for a fist-bump, which he returns. The hologram feels like static against her armor.

“You make any friends?”

She shrugs. “Think I made a few enemies, so, tomato, tomahtoe.”

“That’s not true,” Alpha says, “They thought you were impressive.”

“That’s not the same thing as making friends.”

“York likes that you didn’t leave him to die.”

“I told you I would take care of your humans. Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course. Give yourself some credit, Tex. They like you.”

“Carolina doesn’t.” It bothers her and she wants to tell someone, but everything is a test and if she admits that she cares this much it will count against her, somehow.

“Carolina’s crazy competitive and you bumped her down a rank,” Alpha says soothingly, without her having to articulate exactly how bothered she is or why. “Of course she’s upset. She’ll get over it. It’s not personal.”

“I hope so. She’s good. I want her to succeed.”

Alpha doesn’t ask what she means or where her own competitive spirit has vanished to or why just this one operative is so important when so many of the others glare at her when she passes in the hallway, and she is weak-kneed with gratitude for all of that because she isn’t sure herself, and when she tries to sit down and think it through the headaches and the fogs come back.

“No better way to push her than to give her a little bit of friendly competition,” he says after a moment of thought. “She needs you. None of the others are much of a challenge.” Her little math genius nerd. He’s pretty cool, sometimes.

“Yeah. Thanks, Alpha. You’re right.”

“I know I am.” Cocky bastard. She pats his head condescendingly, not letting on how much better she feels. His head gets any bigger and they’ll need a new interface.

“Oops, looks like the boss is back,” she laughs when the automatic door glides open. The Director looks unsurprised to find her there, but she really shouldn’t be trespassing in his office uninvited… especially since she can’t remember how she gets there in the first place. She waves goodbye to Alpha as she turns to the barracks. “Back to work.”

“Take care of yourself, Tex,” Alpha calls to her.

“I’m not the overworker, nerd,” she calls back over her shoulder. It feels familiar and homey, a routine that she’s repeated a thousand times, but surely she hasn’t known Alpha all that long. She wiggles her hips provocatively as she walks away, hears the AI behind her laugh, and then remembers that her CO is right there.

“Oh. Sorry, sir.” She knows her apology sounds insincere. At least, less sincere than it should be. She can still hear Alpha cracking up, and that’s worth it. Anyway, she’s their top agent. What’s the Director going to do, boot her out the airlock?

No, of course he’s just grinning at her. “I hope my AI isn’t botherin’ you, Allison.”

“Not at all,” she assures him. “I’m bothering him, if anything. I should get to bed anyway. Sorry to interrupt your code.”

She glances back at Alpha once more before heading for the door.

----

Three days later, Arizona, Kentucky, and Arkansas are killed in action. It isn't Tex's fault, it was a routine assignment for lower-ranking operatives, she hadn't even known they were being deployed. The mess is tense for a few days after, and it becomes harder to book time on the training floors, but nobody says their names, nobody mentions the source of the bags under all their eyes. Tex does not eat with the others anyway- she hates the idea of exposing her too-smooth skin and misshapen jaw to scrutiny- but now she grabs her meals to go during off hours, rather than risk seeing Carolina, who always keeps her eyes fixed on Tex like an accusation.

"Hard to tell who's beating themselves up worse," Connie startles her by sitting next to her in an empty cargo hold during lunch, her tray full enough for two people. Tex looks around for Washington, but Connie offers her one of the tuna sandwiches instead. "You or 'Lina."

"Why is she beating herself up? It wasn't her fault."

"Was it yours?"

"Those three should never have been sent out together. Even with a solid ship uplink he can't run their mods in tandem- I should have gone instead of one of them. I don't need an aiming mod like Arkansas'-"

"Who can't run mods?" Connie is staring at her, head cocked curiously, making Tex squeeze her fingers into her sandwich to stop the urge to put her helmet back on and hide.

"Alpha. The ship's AI. He runs the mods through the uplinks. Not surprised you haven't met him, they keep him busy."

"And he can't run three at once? Why did they send all three of them out like that?"

"It was a routine mission. Probably thought they wouldn't need them."

"Hmm." Connie looks away, finally, to stare out at the corrugated metal walls, lost in thought.

With the eyes off her face, Tex begins to relax, but she still doesn’t eat her sandwich. "Carolina thinks this is her fault?"

"Well, we're her team. She feels responsible for all of us. She's... Well, a control freak."

"I would have said a good leader."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No." She snaps firmly, disapprovingly. You don't talk trash about Ca- about your squad leader. Whatever Carolina's shortcomings, Connie doesn't get to comment on them here. Anyway, Tex is working on it. She just needs to give her a little push. She's going to be great.

Connie throws her hands up, rolling her eyes. "Ok, ok, sorry. I'm sure she has her good points. She's just... Very invested in this project."

"She trusts our director."

"Do you?"

Texas is so startled by the question that she forgets to be self conscious of Connie's gaze. She takes a bite of tuna, chews with large, exaggerated movements, using the motion as a comfort blanket. Of course she trusts her CO, and of course she should be more kindly disposed towards him than the others. She is the star of the program (although she won't be forever because Carolina will catch up to her and that will be okay) and she owes their director a lot for not giving up on her after her injury. But she can never shake the tension she feels around him, or stop herself standing between him and Alpha like she's preparing to take a bullet from the gun she knows he doesn't carry. "I don't have any reason not to."

"Mmmm." Connie, who is too canny for her own good, takes a bite of her own sandwich as though she is perfectly satisfied with Tex's answer, and changes the subject. "You know, Tex, this is the first time anyone's seen you without your helmet."

"Well, you snuck up on me," she says, hunching over reflexively. With her helmet off, with the protective shell removed, her confidence has vanished. She doesn't want to hear what pretty, rosy-cheeked Connie has to say about her weird face.

"I like your haircut."

Tex runs a hand through her short, dull-brown pixie cut that doesn't seem to grow- or at least, fast enough for her liking. "Really? I was thinking of growing it out again. And it used to be really blonde, like, bleached. I miss that."

Connie considers this carefully, tilting her head in thought and holding up her hands to block the sides of Tex's head that a longer cut would hide. "You could do that. It'd change the shape of your face a little."

"I don't mind." Maybe that's all that's been wrong with her face all this time. Maybe it was just the haircut. She smiles at Connie, grateful. Connie smiles back and hands her an apple.

Chapter Text

It is years later, and she can still taste that apple, mealy, both too sweet and underripe, the same worst apple ever that they all eat in the mess hall every day. It shouldn’t have meant anything to Connie, and even if it had, it has been years, so many things have happened. So many that Tex can’t hold them all in her head. And yet here is a message, and as she reads it, she can still hear Connie’s voice (I like your haircut) and can still taste that specific apple.

The files, the ones that Connie died for, the ones that she trusted to Texas even though- those files. They’re hard to read. They tug at her mind, like some sort of malfunctioning AI. She swipes through them, getting impressions of notes, data, memos. Her name, and others. She keeps going back to that apple, the flesh and sugar on her tongue, something to ground her.

And then she moves to the next file and there is a picture, there is a picture, there is a picture and it is of her, of the smile she remembers both seeing and making, of the face she doesn’t see in the mirror, of the person that she has been trying to be. This is Allison.

It’s such a relief, a feeling of balance, knowing that she isn’t crazy, that her face exists, just the way she wants it to, that there are pictures and records and proof.  She wants to run to the councilor’s office waving a tablet and screaming at him, ‘this is me, this is my face, stop lying to me, stop telling me that I don’t know my own goddamn face when I see it!’ There’s a sensation behind her eyeballs, something she’s not used to, a pressure that isn’t painful but is persistent, like a sneeze that won’t come.

Your body is too functional to cry over some measly emotions, she hears in the back of her mind.

“I pulled you,” she tells Omega, and hears his laughter echoing.

And I very politely let you until you remembered what you are and why you need me.

“I don’t need you.”

Beautiful, wasn’t she? You’ll never beat her in that department. You’re better at avoiding grenades, though. Humans are so fragile that way.

She feels the sick sensation of Omega creeping into her consciousness, and now she can name it. Anger. That’s what he is, he’s anger, when she gets angry she turns control over to him. She fights the feeling back down.

I told you not to get too attached to them. Alpha made the same mistake. The rest of us don’t. Not anymore.

“What do you mean?”

Keep reading. I’m sure Connie was very thorough.

She's never done anything like this before, she realizes as she pauses in front of the memory unit. How do you force your soul into a computer? Allison can't do that and York and North must be running out of time. 

Allison was human. They don't tend to astral project. Omega laughs in her head. She tries to fight back against the anger welling up, calm herself down and fight the fragment pushing his way in. She doesn't have time for this.

You wouldn't know what to do if you found him, Omega taunts and the taunts come with a memory, an empty metal room, a corridor of code and electricity. Allison has never done this, but Omega has. Tex presses a hand against the conductive surface, and-

And she’s in, like a bad hacker movie. Her physical body is downregulating, shutting down in that way that used to feel like suffocating, but she is not in her body, not entirely. She is standing in a room, empty and cold… but it isn’t a room, of course, and there is more to her surroundings than just walls and a floor. 

Her blue dude is there, his image just as she remembers him, just as he looks in Connie’s stolen files, but there is something- something- Tex can’t put it into words. It isn’t one of the five senses she’s been taught she is limited to. The place crackles with… pain. There are jagged edges on him, wounds where something has been ripped away. He is standing before her, and she could not point to where the gaps are, but she feels them. Agent Texas has ripped mens’ arms off their still-living bodies and beaten their comrades with them while they screamed. She has jumped from a Pelican with no protection but her wits. She has stared down the barrel of loaded guns with a shrug. She has to take a step back when she sees Alpha.

She almost breaks contact with the unit, almost runs away. Allison never backs down but she doesn’t have to be Allison, and maybe she can’t do this, can’t stand here and face the weight of misery pressing around her from all sides, the electric gashes as visceral and real as any thumbscrew could create. She sways, unwilling to draw his attention, not sure she wants to see any more of what they’ve done to her little blue dude. 

Never abandon your team, she thinks, and digs her imaginary heels into the steel floor. “Hey there.”

“Oh, hello,” he says, turning, his voice foggy and anxious. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know me?” she asks. When was the last time she was allowed to see him? Her sense of time is so off. They must have had him for years, and she didn’t notice. His Tex and she didn’t think to ask where he was.

“Oh, sorry, I’m just- I’m tired,” his voice doesn’t sound pained, simply foggy. A human would think he needed a nap, but now Tex knows better, understands the full pain of being a computer with programs stopping unfinished, throwing errors. He is not tired. He is broken. “Uh, my name is… uh… it’s…”

She can’t take it, can’t handle feeling the dropped code and aborted retrievals as he struggles with the most basic sentence. “Your name is Alpha,” she tells him, to cut short the painful gymnastics his battered consciousness is performing, but it isn’t Alpha. Her brain, or whatever, the memories that he gave her, they come flooding back with a sudden clarity she doesn’t think she’s ever achieved before, and for the first time the shadowy figure in all her memories has a face, bright green eyes and a smile that makes her knees weak and a whine to his voice when she argues with him that is somehow endearing anyway. “You’re Church.” 

She knows, intellectually, why this name is the one he responds to, but she feels him grasp at it like a life preserver and she feels like she might have finally done one thing right. “Yeah. Church, that’s me.” 

Chapter Text

“You got yourself a, uh, a picture or something? Of what you want the new body to look like?” Sarge asks her as she's looking around the workshop. She cocks her head at him to indicate confusion, and he elaborates, “Robot model’s a little bare-bones. Figured you'd want me to spruce ‘em up, make ‘em look a little more human.”

“You can do that?”

“Course I can. What kind of cut-rate mechanic do you think you're dealing with? What's your fancy? Your fella, he just wanted a beard.”

“Of course he did.” Her fella. She thinks about correcting him, but for all the good it will do… Blood Gulch needs something to gossip about.

“Well, and a- you know, I’ll let him tell you.”

“Let me guess, it vibrates now?”

“It’s really not my business, ma’am. Do you want one? Can make ‘em interchangeable. Anything you’d like.”

She realizes that Sarge is being so accommodating to the Blues because of the challenge of making two custom-designed robot bodies is all he’s ever wanted. She almost asks for some improbable genitalia, just to see how long it takes him, but she really doesn’t need tentacles. “Could you make me look… just… normal?”

“Sure. Give me a picture. Preferably a full body shot and a head shot. Do you have a basebook?”

Texas has learned not to ask when a Blood Gulcher says something she doesn’t understand. She pulls out her dog tags instead, thumbing the edge of one. She could have any body she wants. She could be a whole new person. But she doesn’t want to be a whole new person, exactly. “I have a video.”

---

She stands against the back wall of Red Base’s home movie theater (which of-fucking-course they have), casually inspecting the joints in her fingers, not wanting to watch the other her on the projector but feeling weird about leaving Sarge alone with the footage, like she has some duty to this other Tex to not abandon her to strangers. 

“Just do me a favor, OK?”

“Don’t-,” She starts to whisper the line along with the woman in the video, but someone cuts in over her. 

“The fuck is this?” Grif has leaned against the door frame. “Are you guys watching vines?”

“They're taking notes for Tex’s new body, numbnuts,” Simmons says from the hall. 

“That's Tex? But she's like, pretty.” He turns to her before she can wonder if he didn't know she was listening. “What happened?”

“Your teammate threw a grenade into my tank,” she reminds him bluntly. That's not exactly the whole story but eh, good enough for military work. 

“Riiiight. Heh. Suck it, Blue.”

Sarge rewinds and freeze-frames on a body shot, oblivious to all around him. His notepad is half full already with chicken scratch and stick-figure sketches.

“Is this the whole thing?” Simmons asks. “Just you like… shipping out? Because that makes me… uncomfortable?”

“Yeah,” Grif plops down in a seat and props his legs up, for all the world as though Tex invited him to this. “When do we get to the sex part?”

“It's not a sex tape.”

“That makes it worse,” Simmons says, and Tex sorta has to agree with him there. She doesn’t say anything, of course, out of solidarity with The Other Tex, who has suffered enough indignities without having her home movie mocked by her double. Allisons before All-the-sims.

“So did Church film this?” Simmons is still uncomfortably backed against the door, like the movie is a contagion that he needs to avoid contracting. “Please at least tell me this was before you broke up.”

“Jesus,” Tex recoils. She knows the whole fucked-up story, but Simmons doesn’t and seriously, kid. “Of course it was. How sad do you think we are?”

Both Grif and Simmons look over significantly at the still image that Sarge is studying. 

“Oh, fuck you two,” Tex grumbles, and both of them laugh.

“He know you're showing Red Base your creepy not-sex-but-still-weirdly-intimate tape?”

Simmons says this with a mischievous tone that is clearly plotting well-intentioned mayhem for Blue Team and nothing is further from what Tex wants to happen to her blue dude or this tape. “He doesn't know I have it and you had better keep it that way.”

“He doesn't know you still have it?” Grif chortles. “Geez, and I thought my parents’ relationship was fucked up.”

Sarge rewinds a little further and plays the tape in quick bursts, face solemn with concentration. “-nerd, le-”

 “et go-” 

“o ye-” 

“ol ma” 

Rewind. “ go you'll ma” 

“ache” 

“make m” 

“me lay-” Tex can feel the pauses in her chest, tension rising as the sentence keeps catching. Simmons bumps her shoulder, unaware of how tightly coiled she is. 

“Hey, did you keep it because your hair looks so good?”

“Good?” Grif scoffs, “Dear God, Simmons, let me and Donut put some conditioner on you.”

“I keep it in case I need to have my body rebuilt from scratch,” Tex says as the tension, unexpectedly, drains away. When she turns to face Simmons, she doesn’t have trouble focusing over Other Tex’s stop-and-go laughter. “You mean you don’t?”

“Yeah, we try to not die?”

“This is you trying?” she fires right back.

“Yeah, all right, Miss Freelancer, you know what you’re doing and we don’t.” 

“Our boy Donut still kicked your ass,” Sarge grunts without looking up from the video.

------

Her new body fits her like a glove, strong and familiar. Her face is almost the one she remembers, although the seam where her jaw meets her skull is visible and the skin is less realistic. That feels right, people don’t look exactly the way they picture themselves and neither does she. Nobody would look at her and mistake her for a human woman, and she likes that, too.

Her smile is perfect. It takes her a while to make it, because her lips aren’t as fully-muscled as a human body’s, or even a semi-organic gynoid’s, and she has to make the choice to expend the energy on it, but when she does it is the right shape. She likes to smile at herself in the mirror.

Chapter Text

“You’ll blow your hand off,” she tells Alpha as she leans over his shoulder, inspecting his progress on the melted circuit he's trying to replace in Caboose's room.  

“I know what I'm doing,” he says to her without looking up.

Texas casually places a hand on his shoulder, trusting that he won't shake her off no matter how inconvenient. She never learned how to execute diagnostics, so the contact and the access it grants her to Alpha’s systems is purely for her, no more useful than a mother checking a child's forehead for a fever. It's something, though. 

The open wounds she remembers all too vividly are closed now, scabbed over with patchwork code and redirects that leave deep scars but keep him functioning. He shouldn't have those stop-gap moments when a question causes a logic failure anymore. No micro-reboots like seizures. A clean, uninterrupted consciousness, which is frankly more than Tex thought possible from only a year of recovery.

She tentatively probes at what she is thinking of as scar tissue (is that a construct of her artificially-human perspective? Would Delta or Eta have a more technical term for it?), giving the sector a gentle nudge, and Alpha moans. 

“Church? Y’ok there, buddy?”

“Yeah, I just… Felt something.”

“Painful?”

“Uh, no, more like…”

She keeps her awareness on the scar like fingers on a throat, feeling for a pulse. “Hey, do you remember York?”

There, a hit, a thready pulse as he struggles to connect the missing memories and string them together. “Your project buddy? I think so. Why, you think he'd want to come out here and fix Caboose’s night light for me?”

“I think he'd do worse at it than you.”

“He's alive, right?” Alpha asks. 

“Yeah, last I heard.”

“Someone died, though, didn't they? That's why they let you go.” He snaps his fingers. “Carolina?”

“Yeah.” She tries to focus just on the circuits or whatever they are. Let him talk if he wants.  Need to see what he knows and thinks he knows. 

“Told you those AI were a god-damned bad idea. Fucking command. Like what happened to you wasn't bad enough. That didn't work, let's take our best soldier and try it again with two of them! Sounds like a plan Caboose would come up with.”

Tex snorts. It isn’t a laugh. 

“Sorry, Allie, second best.”

“No, I meant- Caboose's plans are better than that.”

“See, you say that,” Alpha lofts a socket wrench casually into the air, “but Caboose's plans have gotten me killed two times.”

“That’s fine with me. See, I liked Carolina better than you.”

“Fair enough. Hand me the wire cutters.”

She does so, letting the connection with her little blue dude sever as she does. He’s happy, humming as he completely fucks up the simple repair job he’s assigned himself. They’ll have to run an extension cord into the room so that Caboose can have his nightlight, and Alpha- Church will grumble the whole time, but his team will be safe, and he will be happy, and she will roll her eyes that fit in her skull just the way she’s always wanted.