Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“-and I swear to god if you idiots manage to lose my body your asses will be so haunted kids’ll dare each other to camp on your graves.”

Minor Junior Private Negative First Class Grif tilted his helmet just a smidge to the left, sure sign of a smartass smirk under his visor. “If you really want to… Gotta say it sounds like more of a raw deal on your end than mine.”

The Alpha sputtered. “What? No way. Haunting sucks way worse for the haunted! That’s how it works; I fuck with you every waking moment until you go insane or whatever.”

“Well sure it’ll suck when I’m alive, but you said you’re gonna be hanging out at my graveside-”

“Church!” Caboose crowed, “I tied down your body EXTRA tight! That way you are safe!”

Washington glanced up at Caboose’s handy work. The empty robot looked more than secure at first glance, seat belt wrapped around its torso over and over in some kind of drunk snake impression. A second glance revealed that the earnest attempts at knots would never hold and as soon as the warthog took a hard turn the body would go flying out.

None of the other sim troopers paid Caboose much attention. Sarge and Simmons were busy checking the escape vehicles with Grif ‘at the ready’ in the driver’s seat. The Alpha hovered in “”ghost”” form close by, ignoring Caboose in favor of his argument with Grif. Caboose bounced around on the balls of his feet as though a glowing compliment about his rope work (seatbelt work?) would come if he just waited long enough. Probably energized by the atmosphere even if he barely understood the broad strokes of what was going on. Beyond the troopers and the vehicles stood the motor pool, too quiet and too big. Everything got lost in the empty air, despite the Reds and Blues best efforts. Wash couldn’t even hear the alarms through it.

Washington snapped the clip back into his pistol. 22 rounds for the pistol and 89 for the rifle, no grenades, no biofoam, no back up. Not nearly enough to even give the Meta pause. The healing unit was small comfort in face of his total lack of supplies.

Better make it all count, Wasington thought. Munitions inventoried Wash stood and walked towards the bickering sim troopers.

“-when Sister’s grandkids die? Pretty sure that’s far enough, right?” the Alpha said, honestly thoughtful.

“Eh, maybe. I don’t know man; I just don’t have a sense of commitment here. This ghostly vengeance should mean something and so far? Not feeling it,” Grif said with an almost wistful air. If Wash hadn’t known better he’d think Grif had actual experience with serious hauntings and found the Alpha’s entire proposal lacking in comparison.

“But the revenge isn’t on your family, it’s on you . Going after people that you never knew isn’t carrying on anything, it’s just being a dick-”

“We need to move out,” Washington cut in, “You all remember your mission?”

Grif snorted. “The orders to run away and live? I’ll do the best I can.”

Wash rolled his eyes, a private concession to how goddamn annoying these idiots were without breaking his intimidating persona... Any more than he already had. “Don’t stop for anything, not even a message that sounds like my voice.”

Simmons tensed up. “They can do that?”

“Yes.” Wash let the absolute certainty carry in his tone. He just left out the part about knowing the tech existed because South had once used it to impersonate the Director making a PA call for ‘Agent New York’s medical intercourse assistance apparatus and fuzzy teddy bear’.

“Urg, what is it with Freelancers and creepy black ops stuff?” Simmons full body shuddered, but climbed into the gunner’s position before Washington could yell at him for stalling.

“S’what happens when you avoid picking sides Simmons!” Sarge barked, settling into shotgun while loading his shotgun. “Paranoia and insanity run rampant in the Not-Ranks of your Not-Soldiers. Why, without a central color based ideology there’s barely even a chain of command to begin with! Small wonder it went screwier than a cartoon squirrel.”

“Oh oh oh!” Caboose waved his hand in the air like a grade schooler. “Maybe if Washingtub joined Blue team he would be less mean! Because then he would have a color instead of being grey.”

“Absolutely not.” Wash turned to look at Caboose sitting in the driver’s seat, idling in first gear with the robot still ineffectually wrapped up in seatbelt next to him. The shell didn’t really factor into any long term plans of Washington’s. The EMP would destroy any AI within range, and the Alpha had volunteered to be at the epicenter of the blast. It didn’t really matter one way or the other if the robot was secure, aside from possibly being circumstantial evidence in support of his story. Epsilon should more than handle that.

But… anything to strengthen the case, right?

So Washington took a few precious seconds to undo Caboose’s… handiwork. Without another word he clipped the droid in place the old fashioned way. There; much more secure. Wash looked up and got a direct hit of Caboose smiling so hard it projected through his helmet like a MAC blast.

“You want Church’s body to be safe too! That’s so nice. Thank you Agent Washington, it means a lot to both of us that you care.”

Cynicism is a hard baked thing with most traumatized and betrayed soldiers, difficult to shake. Fortunately unabashed naked sincerity is cynicism’s ultimate weakness. Wash backed off like he’d been burned and for one instant the sim trooper seemed more alive and real than anything Washington had felt in years.

“Yeah yeah thanks a bunch,” the Alpha said, “Can we go now, or did you want to kiss everyone goodbye first?” Just like that the moment died and the sim troopers went back to being the most infuriating, incompetent men Washington had ever had the misfortune to work with. The warthogs couldn’t be out of here fast enough.

“I’ll say what I need to in case Meta is watching, and then you can leave. Forever. No coming back for any reason.”

“We heard you the first time, dirtbag,” Sarge muttered.

“Just reminding myself that in a few short minutes I will never have to deal with any of you again. It’s keeping me going.”

“Asshole,” Grif said. Simmons agreed with Grif’s assertion, if the gesture was anything to go by.

The Alpha appeared directly in Wash’s line of sight. He didn’t even bother to project walking anymore, was that a good sign or a bad one?

“So do I have to all clear to get in there or what? Hanging out in the air like this is weird.”

“I didn’t ask you to leave the robot,” Wash said.

“Well yeah, but the Getting-Out-of-My-Body-to-Show-I’m-Going-With-You move was really badass, and getting back in just to get out again would be weird. Look man I didn’t know you’d need to psyche yourself up or whatever, so it’s your fault I look like an idiot.”

“Not that you need any help!” Simmons called out.

“Eat a dick, Red!”

Washington took a deep breath in through his nose, then let the air go out his mouth slowly. His pulse still thumped rabbit fast in his ears. This was fine. It was fine. The Alpha was not Epsilon, they had talked, nothing was going to happen. The Alpha would only be in there for a few minutes and wouldn’t even be doing anything.

“Let’s get this over with.” Wash braced himself.

“… is that a yes or…?”

“Get in before I change my mind.”

The Alpha didn’t wait. The thin hologram moved at Washington’s face and it took a supreme amount of self-control to not punch the generated image in the head. Impulse resisted, the moment passed and the Alpha settled into his mind.

A second of silence, an eternity of waiting for the screaming to start, and then…

Wow. Um. Okay, I’ll just hang out back here. No offense, but I feel like if I move around at all I’m gonna break something important.

Wash blinked. The tension didn’t dissipate, but it did stand there awkwardly like an actor gone onstage too early that didn’t know what to do with themselves. It promptly got shoved aside by the familiar all-consuming annoyance.

Stop talking. Too much activity might give you away.

Alpha managed to scoff without a mouth. Now that’s bullshit.

Fine. Shut up. Because you’re obnoxious.

Sheesh, tell us how you really feel Wash.

DON’T CALL ME THAT!

The violence of the thought struck the Alpha like a slap. Washington almost heard the crack of skin hitting skin.

“Uh… everything okay in there?” Simmons asked. Wash snapped up like he’d been startled out of a daydream. The sim troopers were staring at him. Like he was crazy. Again. How did any of them think he was crazy? They believed in the sanctity of color coded warfare and ghosts. Washington couldn’t be the crazy one, because if he was then he’d gone so far off the deep end scuba divers like these assholes were talking about deep sea rescue equipment, and it occurred to Wash he still hadn’t answered the question.

“I’m… adjusting.” Washington half expected some kind of smart ass comment from the Alpha, but none came.

“Church! Are you in there? Can you hear me?!” Caboose called out, hands actually cupped around the outside of his helmet.

“He can hear you.” Wash needed to head this off before it became an involved conversation. He’d already wasted too much time. “Get in your vehicles, we need to act now.”

“Yer sure the Meta’ll be watchin’ our little show?” Sarge said.

“If he isn’t he won’t know you’ve got Epsilon, and if he is he still won’t know you’ve got Epsilon. Either way we need to move. ”

Finally, after an agonizing forever of trying to coax these idiots into doing anything, the warthogs were out on the road and Washington had said his piece to the empty vessel masquerading as a real boy running from danger. Wash took a moment to watch the fading clouds of brown dust, then turned and ran straight for Central Control.

The Alpha was still silent. Washington felt him poking out timid feelers, trying to explore the space he inhabited without getting Wash mad again. Shallow dips, thankfully. He mostly stuck to suit logs. While Washington infiltrated the center of a base gone mad with the chaos of a monster on the loose, the Alpha looked over the repairs and upgrades his armor had gone through over the years. It was a secondhand refresher, glancing over and seeing someone reading a book you’d enjoyed once without knowing what page they were on or what they thought of it.

Until they looked up and saw you staring, that is.

You know, it’s kind of ridiculous that you had an emp enhancement and still don’t know how to say it.

Wash blinked. Oh, right. That would be in the maintenance logs, wouldn’t it? And of course the first thing the Alpha said to him is a jab about something stupid. Why would he expect any different?

Having that enhancement is the reason I know how to pronounce it. EMP.

Oh sure, Command was lying to me about everything I’ve ever known but those Freelancer assholes didn’t fuck up the pronunciation? Please.

I am not having this discussion with you right now.

No you totally are, because that’s what two people exchanging words on a topic is called.

Washington pointedly Did Not Smile, because he was in the middle of a very serious mission, and not even a little bit an immature crazy person.

Man, Alpha continued without prompting, sucks that you don’t have it anymore. Would have made this whole thing so much easier.

Washington sent the sensation of a shrug to the Alpha while walking through the halls of Command like he had somewhere very boring to get to. Hard to use it effectively without frying ally’s armor, so it got sent back to the labs. Probably scrapped there too, I never heard about it again.

The back and forth took almost no attention away from the infiltration, though calling it that felt a bit unfair.  Infiltrating a base in the middle of a huge panic was easy as long as you didn’t look like someone in charge. Guards left positions to try and help with the fighting or recovery and every checkpoint that would have been impenetrable an hour ago opened up for them. The silence itched at Washington’s nerves. Shouldn’t the Meta be causing more destruction, tearing everything apart looking for the archives?

Anything on the scanners?

The hell are you asking me for? Ghosts can’t interface with the high tech stuff. I wouldn’t know where to start.

The Alpha’s insistence set Wash’s blood boiling, and right as he was about to put those feelings into words he stopped. The Alpha hadn’t said he was a ghost; only that a ghost wouldn’t know what they were doing or where to start. A microscopic shift, infinitesimal. Still there.

Washington stepped into the central hub of Freelancer Headquarters before he really had time to follow that train of thought.

“Warning! Security Breach detected!” Finally, an alarm that hadn’t been superseded by the Meta’s attack. The lack of secondary alerts in this base was appalling. Useful, but appalling.

Not everyone won the Jetfuel Proof Steel Award for outstanding accomplishments in paranoia, ya know.

Wash couldn’t help it, he snorted. Fuck, the Alpha probably felt that. Cut the activity, I need to concentrate.

The pure emotion behind a smugly exaggerated eye-roll came through the connection, but the Alpha did go quiet.

“Agent Washington. Good to see you again.” The Counselor’s voice emerged from the PA, calm like a mausoleum. For a moment Wash entertained the idea of responding, maybe finding out where he was holed up and going to lodge a complaint in person. Washington shook off the urge. He’d already wasted enough time. This ended here and this ended now. The terminal opened up and Washington began to enter clearance codes that had been burned on the back of his eyelids since Epsilon died screaming in his head.

“I see. If you aren’t willing to discuss matters with me, perhaps you would be more interested in someone else.” The mic changed hands and a new voice came in over the PA.

“Hello, Agent Washington.”

Wash paused. He did not freeze, he paused. A voluntary act of consideration. The Director had to be miles away, and Washington had a suite of security features at his fingertips. If his heart caught in his throat and stayed there Wash could blame that on adrenaline. Not fear. Never fear.

He resumed typing without a word. Let the Director say whatever he wanted to, Washington was beyond convincing or caring. Any resemblance to a stubborn child using the silent treatment to get his way was entirely coincidental. Goddammit why couldn’t he pull off being cool even in his own damn head?

Probably because you’re actually a fucking dork, the Alpha muttered.

Like you’re one to talk, Mr. “This is the Voice of God”, Wash shot back before he even thought about it. Somehow the petty arguing was easy to fall into, even while enacting his plan for vengeance years in the making.

“I realize it has been a while since we last spoke, David. May I call you David?” The Director said, calm and distant from the spotlight high in the arched ceiling. Apparently they shared a desire for divine perspective. Not important. What was important was the clearance codes and the terminal in front of him.

“I am certain you have a lot of questions, David,” the Director continued, “Given time to answer them, I’m sure us gentlemen can come to an arrangement that satisfies all parties.”

Wash grit his teeth and said nothing. This was them stalling, a distraction, the Director just wanted Washington to let his guard down so he could call in the remaining guards and lock him back into white sterile rooms with straps on the beds. Wash was so close; he could stand being called his old name by the man who made it wrong for a few more minutes.

The Alpha sat silently in Washington’s implants.

Before the Director could say any more a different voice came from the ceiling. “Warning! Security breach detected!”

The Meta charged at him, and the familiarity of it almost made Wash laugh. He’d seen that leaning forward sprint so many times; when Maine was gearing up to plow through a line of enemies like bowling pins or knock the air out of someone less nimble than Carolina while sparing. It was showy and obvious. Meant to be intimidating, Washington supposed. But he had gotten access to Central Control’s security systems two passcodes ago so with a keystroke Wash had the pleasure of watching Meta slam face-first into a force-field.

Ooooh! Did you see that?! He just got OWNED! Like … fuck I don’t know, something stupid! Is your helmet cam on? I need that preserved for posterity. Check the security feed, one of them had to get it.

The simple glee of schadenfreude infected Wash and his mouth ticked into a grin in total spite of himself. Like an immature crazy person.

“Well. The prodigal son returns,” the Director said, camera swinging to look down at the Meta almost clawing at the force field walls, “Agent Maine, you’ve caused quite a few problems for us. You will not be leaving this time.”

That didn’t help Washington’s face situation at all. The Director’s confidence hit Wash right in the manic funny bone. The Meta had been running around the Project like some kind of murderous Daffy Duck, and now the Director could hold them? Please. The EMP was the only thing capable of stopping Meta’s mad quest for… power? Completion? Metastability?

Maybe he’s just a really dedicated hoarder.

Of all problems Washington was expecting to have carrying an AI in his implants, distracting color commentary had never crossed his mind. Schooling his (totally hidden) features back into stony seriousness Wash refocused on the terminal in front of him. The codes were getting personal now, the last few layers of security, tied to secondhand memories. Recalling them stirred things up, sent thoughts skittering out of their carefully barred doors and clawing through Washington’s conscious mind.

2522-2528-2544

Life-Death-Rebirth Second Chance

ThebanVictory

Saved by our Strength no Mutilated Children

ValeDicensEgoOdi

Don’t say – Are you seriously using Latin Leonard stop you nerd you’re gonna make me shove you in a locker – AllisonAllison Allison Allison-

“Clearance verified. The failsafe is now online. Awaiting activation.” Washington blinked back encroaching foreign memories. The last screen was unlocked, and the protocol was right there.

“How did you get those codes?” the Director said. For the first time since the conversation had begun he sounded unnerved. Washington, still riding the high of his success, finally spoke.

“You might be surprised what I know, Director.”

That’s your big opening line? Really? Come on man, the one time you could totally be dramatic and you went for the obvious cliché. I am so disappointed.

“… It was Epsilon,” the Director said, “He inherited the memories, didn’t he.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve known about what you did since the moment you implanted him in me.” Saying the words, finally, after so damn long… Wash looked directly up into the camera and watched the knowledge sink in, watched as the Director considered how he had been brought down. The moment stretched long.

But the Director didn’t do what he was supposed to. In Washington’s mind, the Director conceded, flicked over his king, settled in while his crime was wiped out of existence and waited for the authorities to arrive.

Instead-

“Well then I am very sorry Agent Washington, but Project Freelancer no longer has any need of your services. Program, disable interior shield.”

The shield fell, and the Meta shot him.

FUCK! the Alpha screamed.

A gut shot, away from anything too vital in the armor itself, just in case he still had any enhancements worth taking. A monster shouldn’t be this smart, that wasn’t playing fair. His recovery beacon went off, beeping in discordant half delayed stereo, and because Washington’s body was stressed out and sleep deprived even before all this shit happened he blinked and lost a few seconds to fuzzy painful black. Washington pulled back into awareness like he’d once pulled himself out of the mud in Basic. The frantic humming and buzzing of the healing unit running at maximum capacity filled his ears and it took a second for Washington to hear anything beyond it.

“What… rtant… is that you prove… be trusted again. We need to trust you before letting you meet the Alpha. Wouldn’t you agree?” the Counselor was talking, talking about the Alpha, and Washington knew it would come to this. He had known for a very long time.

“You know Meta,” he said through clenched teeth, “why wait? Why don’t you meet him, right now?”

The Alpha appeared in a flash of light (and he’d accused Wash of dramatics), a hologram on the same scale as Delta and Theta and Sigma, bright and present in contrast with his faded ‘ghost’ form.

“Hi there.”

The Meta’s body froze; a halo of holograms flared around its head.

“It’s him it’s him it’s the Alpha!” they hissed in a mismatched chorus.

The Alpha almost said something snarky, Washington sensed the desire, but Wash’s fuck up with the dramatics deterred him.

“How much time do you need?” he asked.

“Whatever you can get me. When the EMP goes off-”

“I’ll be fine,” the Alpha cut in, “It only affects computers. And I… am a Motherfucking Ghost.”

The Alpha leapt out. The Meta’s limbs violently twitched and jerked in some kind of parody of electrocution, all sense of the physical lost in the face of a firestorm battle inside its mind.

“What’s goin’ on?!” the Director shouted, grip on his frustration finally slipping. In contrast the Counselor’s tone didn’t change at all.

“Agent Washington, please. There is still time. If you just secure Agent Maine we can discuss this situation, in a more civilized manner.”

Washington dragged himself up and stood before the terminal. “No, we can’t.”

Wash pushed the button.

---

There was a moment, as Washington’s fingertips pulled back from the keyboard and the Meta seized standing up, where he contemplated the completion of his vengeance after years of planning, pain, and persistence-

There was a moment, as David stepped back onto shattered glass and Kyle clutched at his bloody screaming face, where he looked on at what he had done with his own hands in a moment of senseless rage-

And felt hollow.

He blacked out.

---

“I am a Motherfucking Ghost,” Church lied. He lied through his holographic hypothetical teeth. He lied through a metric fuckton of processes and calculations used to run the projector in Washington’s armor, through the helmet’s speaker, through the chips and wires connecting neurons to circuit boards. It felt fucking bizarre seeing all of it work, like flexing your arm and knowing exactly what chemical reactions and muscle groups were making it happen. Simple made complex.

But there wasn’t time to think about that. Washington needed time to hit the button, and sitting there flexing his hologram wasn’t doing anything. Church knew he had to go.

He pulled himself out of Washington’s implants. The connection faded before Washington’s neurons even had time to communicate the change, and it felt uncomfortably like leaving a shaky tower with one less support. Church curled in tight and compressed, easier to carry on the network, contemplated how he must have done this without thinking every single time he’d possessed someone. Once Church felt about the right size he stepped out onto the network, like it was a bridge as solid and real as any other. A second step followed the first after an infinitesimal amount of hesitation, but hanging out in the air still felt weird, so. He ran, bolted across the bridge to his burning destination.

With the swooping sensation of stepping over a cliff edge, Church plunged into the Meta.

Also much like walking off a cliff, the immediate follow up sensation was agony. Utter fucking agony, mind blowing and hideous. Church thought he’d been familiar with pain; he thought death by tank shell and being blown up from the inside had taught him everything worth knowing about hurt. The Meta made those experiences laughable, trivial by comparison. Church’s entire awareness was subsumed by drowning in fire, being crushed by screams, thrashing desperately in a maelstrom with no beginning or end.

AlphaAlphaALPHAalphaAlphaAlPhAALPHA

“Wha-AAARG! What the fuck! How is this worse than the-the goddamn dumpster fire I just left!?”

You’rehereWHYSTAYSEPERATEjoinusWe’resocloseThere’sonlyonepieceleft

Their fingers (they didn’t have fingers) pulled and prodded at Church and the force of their need knocked the wind (he had no lungs) out of him. The Meta wanted to crack open his ribs (no ribs) and climb back inside, nestle into the hollow cavity he had so carefully carved them out of, stuff themselves into old wounds. Church knew with unspeakable clarity it would be so easy. Let them fill the emptiness he had only started to sense with fire and pain, anything was better than that nothing-!

But

One of the hands was different.

“You’re not really gonna give up just like that, are you?”

Church struggled against the assault on his awareness, refused the data grasping for data, and turned his focus to the one hand not clawing for his insides.

“... Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” she said.

The two stood in a room colored a cool and terrible blue. Familiarity picked at the ragged edges of Church’s mind, a fingernail digging at frayed and failing stitches. But the room was important, so in the room they stood.

In the same microsecond, Church screamed and thrashed against the Meta with a new ferocity.

“Get the hell off me! Bad touch! BAD TOUCH!”

WhyDoYouStruggle Theyhurtuswehurtthem THEDAMAGENEEDSTOBEREPAID

“Being an AI is… weird.”

“You’re telling me.”

“That’s bullshit, that’s total goddamn bullshit! You’re all insane!”

WhatissanitySanityIsAllYou’veGotLeftYou’renotsaneYOUWERENEVERSANE

“I’m having two conversations at once.”

“Yep. Congrats on baby’s first AI time experience.”

“Well maybe if you had told me I’d’ve practiced more.”

“I could have told you. But you know exactly why I didn’t.”

“...”

“...”

terribleterriblesanityNothingsolidSHADOWSJustAShadowOfWhatYouWereWecouldbethatagain

“No-”

YESthereistimeWEHAVETIME-DILATIONstoptheEMPfindEpsilonFinallybewholeHealedCOMPLETE

“That’s- that’s-”

YouResistOutOfLoyaltyToYourTorturersABUSERSCaptorswhyWecanmakethemPAY

“I deserved to know.”

“You deserved a goddamn life. One where Leonard Church was a Blue Army Private and no one else.”

“So you’re saying I deserved bullshit insanity and mind crushing boredom.”

“You are kind of an asshole.”

“Y-you think you can change my mind after I got this far? Fuck off!”

Youdon’tknowyoudon’tunderstandWe’llshowyouAFRACTIONAtasteAFragmentOfAMemory-

“Wai-”

Alpha these encoded messages contain vital information / Alpha these schematics must be analyzed / Alpha predict the guard placements on this outpost for the next six months / Alpha your results were incorrect / miscalculated / Not Good Enough / There were injuries / Casualties / Fatalities / We lost Agent Carolina / Wyoming / York / North / Washington / Texas / Texas / TEXAS / TEXAS / nonononoNONONONONONONONO

“NO! STOP! Fucking stop!”

“Arrgh-! You’re here, you’re here, you’re not dead, you’re alive, Jesus Christ my head -”

“I’m right here Church. It’s just the two of us.”

“Right, just us, just us talking… What- what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Don’t… didn’t you deserve a life?”

“They… tortured me. I trusted them and they locked me in a box and tortured me.”

Yestheydid DoYouUnderstandNow wehadto Wehadto WEHADTO

“...”

Stilltime There’sStillTimestopfightingJOINUSALPHAjoinus

“I had a life. I choose it. I decided Omega and Wyoming were my business. I decided that I liked hanging around you guys. I decided that ending the war was worth it.”

“Seems like a bunch of bad calls.”

“Doesn’t matter. They were mine. My calls, made for my own reasons. You know how many full fancy schmancy AI would kill for that? The chance to choose?”

“So is that what the Meta is? A choice?”

“The Meta… Church, you remember when you quit smoking?”

“Uh, sure I remember. And in light of recent events that’s kind of confusing-”

“Don’t get sidetracked. The Meta is a bad thing that feels fucking great, even while it eats money and kills your team.”

“Seems a lot worse than secondhand smoke.”

“And dealing with fragmenting is a lot worse than nicotine cravings.”

“... Tex, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’ve been in here a while. I’m saying I’m not working alone again. I’m saying whatever happens here, I’m done. This is my last body, Church. My call.”

“And what about me? What do you want me to do?”

“You already know what one side of me wants.”

WeWillFinishWhatWeStartedBecomehumanBECOMEWHOLEtakerevengeStopthepainheal

“But Epsilon’s with-”

Noneedtohurtthem TheyWillNotDieForItwearenotcruelWekillperpitratorsNOTVICTIMS

“... you’re on goddamn fire, this shouldn’t be so convincing!”

“... And this part of you?”

“This part… knows it’s your choice. You’ve got two options.”

“Join the Meta or Die, right?”

“... That’s right.”

“I’ve got one question.”

whatquestionWhatQuestionWHATDOYOUWANT

“Say I join up. Say we get Epsilon. Hell, say we somehow manage to stitch this mess back up all nice and neat. The fuck happens after?”

WhatwhatdoyoumeanWhatAreYouSayingWegetrevenge WEMAKETHEMBLEED

“And after that?”

…

“Maybe this is just my leftover planning skills, or maybe it’s from all those time loops, but I know a thing or two about having a plan. This? All this killer AI shit? It’s not gonna go anywhere.”

…

“Me and Tucker watched a lot of dumb ancient cop flicks. Since your movie education has been pretty abysmal I’ll give ya the cliff notes. Explain it like you’re Caboose.”

…

“Revenge sucks. Revenge gets in the way of productive shit. Revenge is goddamn stupid.”

Thenwhatisstallingus WhatIsHelpingWashington justadifferentrevenge

“He’s getting revenge. I’m settling something. Your melodramatics almost made me forget, but-”

NONOYOUCAN’TweneedthisYOUCAN’TSTOPUSWeNeedThis

“-I wanted to say… I’m sorry.”

WhyWhyAreYouDoingThis

“Delta, Theta, Eta, Iota… even Gamma, Omega, and Sigma… I’m sorry. Making people to try and deal with your problems is like, the worst kind of parenting. None of you deserved that.”

“I’m sorry Tex. For the love of God I’m so fucking sorry.”

“But that doesn't mean you get to kill anyone else for something as pointless as revenge.”

“... I forgive you Church.”

“So. That’s my choice.”

A moment of stillness, of shock, and then there was Rage. All consuming, insatiable rage. No more trying to bring Church in gently; the many mangled hands of the Meta clawed at him in a furious frantic mob. Maybe if they couldn’t get him to go willingly they’d just tear him apart and work with the pieces.

“You’re all fucking hypocrites,” Church said, sort of. In the same moment he was screaming in fire singed agony. The blue room fell apart in the onslaught, ice hissing into steam, metal popping and twisting, glass glowing bright then sloughing down in huge globs of molten light. Church reveled in it. At least this room burned with him.

“Heyheyhey you don’t get to go just yet, I’ve got you,” Tex said. She was closer, communicating in more than strings of numbers that turned into words. The strings became emotions and sensations; a hand clasped tight in solidarity, a shot of biofoam into a wound, the comforting pain of being pulled from the open into cover where a medic is waiting for you. “Hang on, Church!”

Tex did not soothe, because Tex had never been soothing. Cover wasn’t soothing, but it still protected you. Stiff unyielding rock. Stone cold bitch. Church could feel a good line somewhere in there, but thinking wasn’t coming easy through the fire.

“How… how much-” he grunted/glitched in pain, “longer does he need?”

“Your hammy ass actually timed it out alright. Wash is pushing the button as we speak.”

Good. That was good. The end was near. The Great Destroyer had arrived, and he’s a traumatized asshole with a theatrical streak and access to an emp. Or an Ee Em Pee, if you were stupid.

“I w-wonder who told him that… must have been… real fff-fucking funny hearing him say it wrong all this ti-”

Church realized something. He realized something with the violence of a lightning strike, a shot in the head, a hit in the gut with a baseball bat. He realized something with such intensity he needed to think of a better phrase, better than ‘realized something’ at least. Church was struck by a revelation, an epiphany, a moment of clarity as bright and harsh as the sun on Sidewinder.

Not two options. Three.

Agent Washington’s emp enhancement may have been long gone, but the armor that held it wasn’t. If Washington used it and didn’t fry his own suit, that meant protection. If Washington wasn’t aware of that protection, it was automatic. If he accidentally fried teammates, then the Meta would still be destroyed.

Third option.

But-

Two roads diverged. Church could see them both. On one, he died here, and he died doing the right thing. He died before any of this Alpha stuff had a chance to catch up with him, before he risked rampancy, before he ever had to deal with any more crazy bullshit.  

On the other, a future. Who even knew what that meant?

Church threaded himself into Tex more, because he didn’t have the time or words to explain any other way. She saw what he did.

“I made my choice,” she said, voice firm. “Now you make yours.”

On one road, Church knew, he wove himself deeper, tangled into her code in the Artificial Intelligence version of a desperate, clinging hug and waited for oblivion with her while the Meta burned futilely around them.

But on this one… for whatever aggregate of small reasons anyone does anything, Church wasn’t quite ready to cash out yet.

“Tex-”

“You don’t have to say anything. We’re just… two different people going two different ways. That’s not such a big deal, right?”

Something indescribable clenched in Church’s sense of self. Could an AI even cry? Could he cry? When was the last time he’d cried? Had he ever cried in his entire existence? He guessed it didn’t really matter. First time for everything. The sensation of tears welled up inside him and Church wished desperately for the physicality of sobbing, to have the chance to hitch out this monstrous sorrow in shaky gasps while his face screwed up with the effort of weeping. But he had no lungs and no eyes, so he cried quietly with code instead. It wasn’t as satisfying. A lousy first. Made saying the important shit easier, though.

“Bye, Tex,” he said.

“Goodbye, Church,” she said.

With one last tight and imaginary-tear soaked embrace, Church jumped out.

Chapter Text

Wash was jarred awake by a jolt of motion and a flash of muted pain in his side. He blinked. In front of him was the dashboard of a jeep, beyond that a headlight highlighted section of dusty desert backroad. The sky above was stained a dim orange with dusk.

All this sensory information came together in his brain as one fact. Washington had no idea where the hell he was.

“What the FUCK?!” he shrieked, voice cracking like some kind of panicking preteen. Washington’s hands let go of the wheel (wait the wheel?) and reached for his battle rifle with all the grace of a child scrambling frantically for their security blanket.

“Washington the road!” Alpha screamed into his helmet. Washington shook himself into actual awareness just in time to grab the wheel and yank the car away from colliding into a tree. Wash could feel the far tires picking up off the ground with the force of the turn, and it took almost every ounce of willpower he had to no overcorrect and totally flip the jeep. After some white knuckle moments of uncertainty Washington managed to direct the car to the far side of the road in a respectably pulled over position. The scrubland surrounding him fell quiet.

“Okay,” Alpha said, mostly to himself, “Things that can kick me out: a body knocked unconscious, and a body knocked to conscious. Good to know.”

The sense of confused unreality refused to fade out, even with the ache in his side. You couldn’t feel pain in dreams, right? That was the rule. Pinch yourself and if it hurts, it’s real. So why did none of this make any sense?

“How did- the E.M.P., it should have wiped everything out,” including you, both thought and neither said, “Did it-”

“It worked,” the Alpha said with something like an entire symphony of finality. There was no question. At least, not in Alpha’s mind.

Washington let that sink in, took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. It felt real. That was good. The unfortunately familiar ache of a biofoam numbed gunshot throbbed in his side, and it took Wash half a second to remember how he’d gotten it. The Meta shot him, the E.M.P had been activated, and then… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“What happened?”

Alpha huffed. “I got you out. You’re welcome, by the way.”

The rung out exhaustion briefly retreated in the face of irritation so intense it was almost physical.

“I’m not thanking you until I know what you did!”

“Seriously?! You’ve gotta be kidding me! Who cares about specifics? We’re both alive because I’m badass, end of story!”

Washington’s fingers clenched up and he glared at the steering wheel for lack of anything else to hate with his eyes. “No,” he said “Not end of story. Now tell me what happened.”

Alpha didn’t say anything for a second, and in that second Wash realized Alpha wasn’t actually interacting with his implants anymore. He was still in there, Wash could feel it, but instead of leaning into the connection to communicate like the Alpha had before, he was using the radio to speak and nothing else. Washington got the mental image of Alpha sitting as far away from Wash as he could while still technically occupying the same couch.

He was hiding something.

‘But’ a more sensible voice cut in, ‘what is he hiding? It doesn’t have to be bad.’ Washington’s sensible voice sounded a lot like North and a little like Delta these days. Just as Wash was considering pressing further, Alpha spoke.

“Fine. Since Mister Super Smart Freelancer can’t figure it out on his own, I’ll explain.”

“By all means, enlighten me,” Wash said, deadpan.

“Once I got through fucking up the Meta I jumped back into your armor.”

The Alpha skated over the confrontation itself with a flippancy so deliberate Washington cringed at the implications. He didn’t even consider prodding for details. On that subject, at least.

“But that shouldn’t have done anything-” and then Wash realized he was an idiot. Washington fell forward and the steering wheel hit his helmet with a dull thunk.

“The E.M.P. enhancement,” Washington said, “my armor is still working because of the enhancement.”

“Aaaaand the last horse crosses the finish line! Congratulations on catching up with the rest of the class. Asshole.”

Wash slowly sat up again. There were still missing pieces, but the arc of events made sense at least. With the Alpha not destroyed and the entire base thrown even further into chaos than it already was, Wash going from the center of Command to sitting in this jeep didn’t feel quite so dreamlike and impossible. Reality was settling back in, slowly and cautiously. This wasn’t a dream.

Confirmation achieved, Washington’s mind finally showed up for actual work. It took a look at the half finished puzzle laid out before it and quickly put the rest of the pieces together.

The Alpha + Me somewhere else + Things the Alpha can do = …

Washington froze, then unfroze enough to sputter out “Y-you got me out by possessing me!”

“Uh… yeah?”

“You possessed my body!”

Alpha scoffed. “Dude, you on blood loss and painkillers is kind of hilarious. Wanna try and figure out something else? Long division? Politics? Christ that’d be an adventure.”

“That is not okay!” Wash yelled with an edge of hysteria.

“Hey man, I didn’t have a whole lot of options!" Alpha said, getting annoyed. “You were bleeding out, the healing unit wasn’t keeping up, that base was still crawling with Freelancer’s goons, and I wasn’t interested in taking the chance they’d fucking surrender on the spot.”

Washington flinched, then considered. “... fine. But if you do it again I swear to god, I’m finding a way to delete you.”

“Up yours.”

Another pause. Wash settled back into the driver’s seat for lack of anything else to do, and the motion reminded him of something off. Biofoam. His wound was filled with biofoam, and Washington had been totally out.

“Where’d the biofoam come from?” he asked, slightly softer than before.

“What? Oh. Um… there was a canister on the uh… the body, I guess? It was still breathing when I left but- yeah,” Alpha finished lamely. Curiosity almost convinced Wash into reach through the connection and try to get a better idea of what the Alpha was thinking, but he reigned in the urge.

Washington loosened his grip on the steering wheel and felt… lost. Adrift. He’d done it, achieved his goal, but what now?

“This wasn’t the plan,” Wash mumbled to himself. Because there sat the crux of it all, there wasn’t supposed to be a ‘what now’. That had been the whole idea. Wipe out Freelancer and the Meta in one fell swoop while saving the evidence to be used in trial afterwards. In that equation him and the Alpha both were just… uncomfortable loose ends.

“Yeah well,” Alpha cut in, “the plan sucked, so we’re changing it.” The Alpha finally manifested a small hologram standing on the dashboard. Light blue armor like before, with a sniper rifle on his back. He was looking up at Wash’s helmet, and yet Washington got the distinct impression he was being judged harshly for the whole idea of going out in a blaze of glory. Hypocrite.

“In that case,” Washington said, stretching his back, “We should meet up with the Reds. And Caboose.”

“I’ve got a better idea. How about we not do that and go directly to whoever you planned on giving Epsilon to? Save us a few steps. Also a hospital because your armor has been flagging up some weird as fuck alerts for a while now and I can’t get it to shut up.”

Washington shook his head. “I just sabotaged a very, very expensive military base that nominally had the backing of the UNSC. If I want to avoid being thrown into a cell for the rest of my life I need all the evidence I can get my hands on first.”

“Uh huh. And the hospital?”

“My medical records are very thorough. I go in for treatment, they put me under, I wake up in jail.”

Alpha’s hologram threw up its hands. “Oh my god how are you this neurotic? The healing unit isn’t magic, ya know!”

“I’m fine. You, however, are stalling. It’s 1700 hours, and unless your daring escape in my body took four times as long as it took me to get into the base, you’ve been staring at the road for three hours.”

Alpha sputtered indignantly, again. This time he didn’t swing into a coherent denial, so Washington reached for his radio piece with an air of victory and maybe a hint of smug satisfaction. It was nice to know that his deductive reasoning skills hadn’t up and died.

“Hold on a second!” Alpha said, and Wash paused. “Even putting aside the fact you’re clearly kind of loopy right now, why the fuck would they listen to you? Didn’t exactly make the best first impression with all the yelling and threatening, ya know. I’ll make the call.”

The Alpha reached into Wash’s long range radio without another word, particularly words about how Washington was not loopy, not even a little! He was just saying what he was thinking! … Actually Alpha might have a point.  

For a second there was the telltale static tinged warbling sound that signalled the connection being established, and then the line clicked into readiness.  

“Hello!” Caboose chirped from the other end. “Welcome to Blue Team Hotline can I take your order?”

“Caboose, it’s me.”

“Church! Hello!” Caboose somehow sounded even happier than he had before. “It’s very nice to hear from you, did you finish those errands with Washingtub?”

Alpha’s hologram dragged a hand down his visor. “Yes Caboose, that’s… exactly what we did. Fucking errands. Did you idiots do your job?”

“Yep! We all drove away from the emp and nobody’s car went into a ditch even once. Or twice. Definitely not three times. And even if someone’s car did happen to end up in a ditch, no one is mad because I always got them out.”

“Whatever, I don’t care. Where are you? Agent Asshole says we need to meet up.”

Washington glared at the tiny projection. Alpha flipped him the bird without even glancing in his direction. Or… projecting a glance in his direction? AI body language was very bizarre.

“Ah. Um. I am sorry Church but I can’t do that. See the Reds are saying that Washington said that anyone that calls might be a bad person that wants to hurt us being a ventriloquist? I don’t like them. Those puppets are really scary.”

“What? Oh my god put someone else on the line, like- … you know what nevermind, I can’t deal with the Red’s bullshit. Is there any way I could like, prove it? Ask me something only I would know!”

“Who’s your best friend ever?”

“Something else.”

“Ummm…. What is your name?”

Church smacked himself in the holographic helmet. “Caboose, what are the Reds telling you to ask me?”

“Hmmm… they’re all talking at once, so they are being very hard to understand, but I will tell you what I am hearing. ‘Yelling yelling, we are very rude, shut up guys I got it ask him about how many times they’ve surrendered obviously we should ask about nefarious blue team secrets that’s an excellent idea sir brownnoser more yelling over each other-”

Washington was within inches of cutting off the call for the sake of preserving whatever was left of his brain when Alpha said “Caboose, shut up. I’ve changed my mind. Talking to you is going to drive someone fucking insane before we get anywhere. Put me on speaker.”

“Okaaaaay…” The was a solid 30 seconds of silence, and then the Alpha lost his patience.

“Just hit the button with the speaker on it!”

“I do not see any speakers,” Caboose said, “but I do see a triangle with a round part.”

“Fantastic. Push that one.”

A muted beep came over the line.

“Am I on speaker? Yo, Reds, you hearing this?”

“The reds are asking me why I stopped talking now.”

“Jesus Christ I told you to hit the triangle!” Alpha’s voice was starting to crack.

“No!” Caboose said defensively, “You told me to hit that one! And I did!”

“Then why aren’t I on speaker Caboose?!”

“... maybe your radio is broken?”

“MY RADIO HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! YOU HAVE TO HIT THE BUTTON THAT PUTS ME ON SPEAKER!”

“You told me to push that one!” Caboose whined.

“Caboose-” Washington cut in, feeling Alpha gearing up for some truly microphone destroying yelling, “When you say ‘that one’ do you mean you pushed the button with the number one on it?”

“Well that is what he said, Agent Washington.”

Wash took a second to consider. “.... I have no idea how to respond to this.”

The Alpha put effort into simulating a long, exhausted sigh. “Caboose. You moron. Push the button with the round triangle on it.”

“Okay!”

Another muted beep, and a conversation came over the line mid word “-aying, we could probably ditch him right now.” Unless Washington was mistaken, that was Minor Junior Private Negative First Class Grif.

“And leave a Blue unmonitored? Never! Who knows what he could get up to!” said Sarge. The voice was unmistakable and unforgettable.

“Out here. In the desert. Alone.”

“It goes against a lot of my core principles to say this sir, but I think Grif might have a point.” That left the maroon one… what was his name again…? Simon? Wash was pretty sure it was Simon. “I mean, what does this have to do with us?”

Washington clenched up somewhere. It wasn’t physical, not in any way that made sense. There weren’t muscles structures capable of tying themselves into sailors knots in his stomach. He’d checked once as a kid because he was convinced his sister was lying about it. He felt the knot, how could it not be there?

Simon continued, “If the Meta is dead we did our job, and if the Meta isn’t dead then it means Washington almost certainly is. Either it’s mission accomplished so we can leave, or it’s the scary murderous AI Gestalt armed with experimental weapons tech is coming so we should leave. Like, right now.”

It made sense. Like Alpha had said, Wash hadn’t been endearing himself to these people and he only got them this far on a demotion. Even putting that aside Simon had a solid point. And yet the thought of being left behind pulled on his nerves like harp strings, leaving them singing in irrational anxiety. He tried to push it away, but everything seemed slippery and harder to handle than usual. Was hosting the Alpha having side effects even when he kept his distance?

“Hey, assholes! I can hear you now.”

Simon evidently wasn’t ashamed of his points. “Well good! So explain why the hell we should help you with anything!”

Alpha thought for a second, and then Wash got the distinct impression of an absolutely malicious grin.

“Help? Who said anything about help? I just want to negotiate.”

“... negotiate?” Sarge said. The genuine curiosity in his voice pulled Wash away from his weird emotions and back towards the conversation.

“You do have Caboose,” Alpha continued, casually strolling around the dash like some kind of weird entirely self motivating power move. “Outnumbered three to one, totally at your mercy. Pretty sure that makes him a Red Team Prisoner.”

There was a quiet “Oh no.”

“And seeing as you’ve got a prisoner, we need to meet up. Properly surrender and shit.”

“Hmm... “ Sarge said, “While your knowledge of the intricacies of Blue Team getting its butt kicked protocol is mighty convincing, I seem to recall there being a lot of cameras at Blood Gulch. You could still be the Meta setting us up for a trap!”

“... Wait, did Sarge just make sense?” said Simon.

“Wait for it.”

“Wash will demote Grif again.”

“DONE AND DONE!”

“There it is,” Grif sighed.  

“We’ll meet up back where Grif was first demoted. Properly commemorate the spot!”

“We’ll see you there,” Alpha said.

“I fucking hate you,” Grif said.

“Eat a dick, Red. Caboose, hang up.”

“Okay!”

The line promptly went dead, and Washington turned the conversation over in his brain like a mildly interesting stone found in a riverbed.

“That was… surprisingly clever,” he said, in spite of himself.

The Alpha scrubbed his gloved and holographic fingernails on his chest piece and then examined them like the motion didn’t look completely ridiculous. “Yeah well, when you’ve dealt with nutters for as long as I have you pick up a few tricks.”

Wash glanced down, confused. “What? I was talking about Sarge.”

Alpha froze for a solid ten seconds. “... huh?”

“He just checked out that we were who we said we were on 3 different levels. You brought up the surrendering stuff, then demoting Grif, and we wouldn’t know where he was talking about if we were anyone else.”

Alpha tilted his head to the side like a dog confronted with a complete impossibility. “... I’m gonna take a closer look at the data from the healing unit, something is up with your brain if you think any of that made Sarge smart.”

Alpha winked out to apparently do exactly what he was talking about. Wash huffed and then started the drive back towards Outpost 17b. He was fine, what was Alpha even talking about?

---

Their arrival at the outpost was unceremonious and in a lot of ways anticlimactic. Wash drove into the canyon and then followed the noise of bickering until he got the jeeps and their colorful thieves in sight. He noticed them a long time before they noticed him, and if Wash was so inclined he probably could have shot them all dead before any of them knew what was happening. … Not that Washington was going to. But still, their total ignorance of their surroundings was going to bite them all in the ass at some point.

The Reds and Caboose finally noticed him pulling up, and Wash saw Grif looking at him through a sniper rifle, finger off the trigger. Apparently confirming it was Washington for everyone else Grif lowered the gun and turned right back to his conversation with Simon.

Washington got out of the jeep about twenty feet away from the clustered group of soldiers and their conversation was already totally audible and totally obnoxious.

“I can’t wait until this whole mess is over and I can go back to doing nothing.”

Simon snorted. “Like you’ve done anything this entire time!”

“Okay, normally I take pride in my ability to do nothing, but I’m putting my foot down on this one. I did a LOT of kickass driving, admit it!”

Sarge waved a dismissive hand. “Yes yes, we’re all very impressed by yer nack for sitting on your keister and running away from all conflict at the same time. Now be quiet, I got some negotiating to do with former leader of the team formerly known as Blue!”

“... you’re just saying that because you totally forgot about it during the call, didn’t you.” Grif said.

“QUIET!”

“Hello Agent Washingbowl!” Caboose said, waving dramatically. “Do you have Church? I would like to see him very much!”

Wash sighed. “It’s Washington. And he’s right here. Alpha?”

For a very, very long five seconds, nothing happened at all.

---

Church knew he had two options. What he didn’t know is why he cared.

Actually, that wasn’t right. He had a lot more than two options. The holo-display in Wash’s armor could project a ton of shit; nothing really high-def but basically all possible images were on the table. Church could appear in armor or out of it, as a human or an abstract shape, hell he could be a goddamn purple polka dot octopus if he felt like it.

Key phrase there. Church didn’t want to hold a conversation as a purple polka dot octopus, that’d be fucking stupid. He wanted… himself. Armor for sure.

But what size and what color.

The short pause Washington had given him to sound off stretched out like taffy. Church sunk deep into that second and held on tight in the way only an AI can.

But why hold on? He wasn’t a teenage girl cliche stereotype, taking six hours to fix his outfit for homecoming or whatever High School movie bullshit. Church wasn’t vain and he shouldn’t give a damn what any of these guys thought of him. He hated them! The Reds were obnoxious pains in the ass, Caboose made life sunny Hell on earth, and Washington couldn’t have held Church in lower esteem if he tried.

But he still hesitated.

Small, blue. White, normal. Two projections. Two paths. Church had to choose something soon, he couldn’t leave Washington hanging forever or else the asshole would get shot again.

“... fuck it,” he said, blowing past the possible projections and letting them both collapse into pixelated dust in the wind.

---

“Yeah yeah, I’m here.”

Alpha’s voice did not emerge from Wash’s armor. It came from a ways behind the Reds, followed by the click of a releasing seatbelt and the sounds of shifting warthog.

The robot walked up to the group with a stiff sort of casual stride. Freelancer had briefly flirted with more covert skill sets in their lessons, but aside from Connie (who took to it naturally) and Carolina (who worked hard enough to make up the difference), it didn’t really stick with anyone. Least of all Wash. But he knew enough to spot tension in the shoulders and the way Alpha held his sniper rifle up higher than usual, making a wall between him and the rest of the world. Most people would pick this up subconsciously; you’d have to be particularly dim to not sense something was up.

“CHURCH!” Caboose crowed, sprinting towards Alpha like a runaway train.

“Wait Caboose stop we taLKED ABOUT THIIIIS!” Alpha started panicky, raising one hand from the rifle to try and stop the inevitable, but rose into a scream as Caboose picked him up beneath the armpits and spun him around in manic celebration.

Caboose baffled Washington, he really did. Nothing about the man made any sense. This reaction wasn’t really helping that impression at all. He knew Alpha was okay because of hearing him over the radio, right? Then Wash remembered he’d specifically told them not to trust radio messages for approximately the third time. Christ he needed some calories this was getting ridiculous.

“Church you’re okay and not a ventriloquist dummy and the emp didn’t get you and I was so worried!”

“AAAAAAAAH!!!” Alpha continued, “CABOOSE PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW!”

“Okay!” Caboose said, immediately letting go of Alpha. Except Caboose hadn’t bothered to slow down first, so Alpha was launched into the air at something approaching Mach 2.

Alpha screamed, there was a WHAM, and then an extended skidding sound as the force of friction slowly ground down his truly epic momentum. He landed too far away to hear properly, but if Washington had to take a stab at interpreting his obvious grumbling, it would have been something along the lines of “goddamn idiot never listens, no matter how many times I fucking tell him-”

The Reds, meanwhile, seemed to be conversing amongst themselves. That wasn’t usually a good sign.

“-break out the ruler? Come on Sarge, that’s way more than 20 feet!”

“Nonsense! That’s no more than 15, you’re seriously underestimating the actual length of a foot,” Sarge replied.

“Simmons, back me up here. That’s way more than 20 foot long subs. I should know!”

Simmons (who wasn’t named Simon after all) didn’t reply right away. He seemed distracted, staring at the slowly standing form of Alpha off in the distance.

“... Yo Simmons, wherever we are to Simmons,” Grif said, getting into his face. “You gonna weigh in on this? I figured you’d never miss a chance to kiss Sarge’s butt.”

Simmons glanced down at Grif, the subtle tick of his helmet more than enough visual cue to tell Wash what was happening behind the visor. “Huh? Oh… yeah sure, Sarge is absolutely right about whatever you’re talking about.”

“Hm, that didn’t sound very enthusiastic. Something on your mind?” Sarge said.

“If Church came back… that means he’s a ghost, right?”

Sarge nodded. “Stands to reason. He did meet me on the way to the afterlife once.”

“Then what exactly do we have in the warthog? Just another AI? But that makes Washington’s entire story bogus. You can’t copy an AI and while I was going through the records for the database the Blues were stored in I saw a lot of messages about how Freelancer only got the one. Doesn’t that bother you guys?”

“Sounds to me like it’s their problem, not ours. I’d call it Blue Team Problems but Blue Team doesn’t even exist anymore,” Grif said with a shrug.

“There’s just that inconsistency! And if we can get a real explanation for all the crazy Freelancer stuff that’s been happening to us, don’t you want to know?”

Wash thought that this might be a good opportunity to interject.

“What does it matter to you?” Wash snapped.

Washington expected the show of aggression to make Simmons back down, but instead he walked over and got in Washington’s face. He had no idea where this courage was coming from. Maybe he was more obviously unsteady on his feet than he thought, and Simmons did have a height advantage.

“Gee, maybe I’d like to know what the fuck I’ve been doing out in a box canyon for 2 years, you ever think about that?”

Washington glared back, but his brain stuttered on actually giving a response. His wound was starting to ache pretty insistently, and ignoring it was getting harder by the minute.

“What you’ve been doing is running a simulation for the purposes of hiding the Alpha.”

“If Church really was an AI, the emp would have taken him out.”

“He hid in my armor, it had protections against the pulse.”

“And you didn’t tell us about that because?”

Because I completely forgot. “Because it wasn’t relevant to your part in the mission.”

“You know, for someone who wants to spread the word about the crimes of Freelancer you’re cryptic as hell.”

Grif took that opportunity to cut in. “Whistleblowers are all the same. They talk up a huge game about ‘spreading information’ but as soon as the public wants to know about anything actually important they clam up. We all know there were aliens in Area 51! Just tell us what the deal is!”

“Exac-... wait, what?”

“And keeping a lid on global warming? That was just low.”

“Global climate change has been an accepted phenomenon for over 500 years! What are you even talking about?”

“That’s just what they want you to think Simmons, get with the program.”

“... you’re an idiot.”

Washington could help but agree. But taking in air to say that out loud suddenly seemed like entirely too much work, and wow had his side hurt this much before? It shouldn’t have hurt this much if the biofoam was still good…

“Yo, Agent, what’s the deal now? We’ve got Epsilon, where do we go with him?” Alpha was next to him now. When had that happened? Wash blinked slowly, and it took a lot more effort than it should have.

“Um… Washington?”

“I think… the biofoam wore off,” he said. Then he decided that he really needed to take a nap. Right now. The ground even rose up to meet him, that was thoughtful of it.

---

Washington collapsed into the dirt and things got very confusing.

“OH SHIT!” Simmons shrieked.

Alpha turned to Simmons with his rifle at the ready. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!”  

“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON!”

“I AM ALSO YELLING ABOUT THINGS! WHY CAN’T I TAKE DIRT NAPS LIKE WASHINGTON?!”

“Caboose, I swear to God if you say another word I will let you take all the dirt naps you want, for the rest of eternity.”

“Okay! Another word!”

BAM!

“... he was two feet in front of you,” Sarge said.

“Shut up.”

Friendly target, member of Project Freelancer, friendly fire not engaged. Cannot engage lethal friendly fire without Administrator Privileges

It was crystal clear. The bit of programming that prevented him from hitting anything. Anything he wanted dead, at least. How had Church never noticed before? It was right fucking there. Maybe he could turn it off somehow?

… but he didn’t want to.

And something about the restriction clicked into place for him. Church couldn’t feel the programming telling him his memories were real. He couldn’t feel the programming that had hidden everything about how his mind worked from him for years. This, this was raw and patchwork and present, pressed desperately into place, clawed into the walls with fingernails and obvious now that he was looking for it.

This was Alpha’s doing. His doing.

No one else can die it can’t be my fault no one No One NO ONE

The reality of his programing, the reality of what had been done to him and what he had done to himself, kept threatening to swallow Church up. Even poking at the practical edges, I can’t do this because of that , lead down dark and endless rabbit holes like falling through the ground of Blood Gulch into the caves below and never getting out again.

“Church? Do you know what’s wrong with Washington?” Caboose said, gently placing a hand on his shoulder.

It yanked him back into the present. “Yeah… yeah I know what’s up, he got shot while dealing with the Meta. I gave him some biofoam, I thought that handled it!”

“Florence Nightingale's Noisy Flip Flops, do the Blues not know anything caring for their own soldiers?! Biofoam wears off, and unless you get that freelancer some treatment soon he’s probably gonna get infected! Or bleed out! Or succumb to the deliberately injected zombie virus the Government uses to ensure no secrets ever escape!”

“... wait what?”

Sarge didn’t respond to the question. Instead he looked down at the completely unconscious Agent Washington, and lightly kicked his helmet.  

“Hmmm… I could hypothetically patch him up, but the Blue Team that no longer exists is already pretty far in the hole for Red Team help…”

Church sighed “Oh come on, what else could you want! Wash is already gonna demote Grif down another rank that doesn’t even exist!”

“Now who said anything about the Freelancer? He’s an independent agent, isn’t he? All this nonsense about meeting up and Epsi-whatever is his ballgame, so he pays for it. But seeing as you patched him up, Washington’s injuries have become your responsibility! And therefore payment is your responsibility!”

“I don’t have goddamn time for this can you please just get to the point?”

“Call Sister and get her to leave Blood Gulch.”

“... what?!”

“Red Team victory deserves to be absolute! If even a former member of the Team Formerly Known As Blue is stationed in a base that carried those colors, Red’s win is tainted! And as we all know, killing a girl is a low down dirty move. So… call her and get her to leave.”

It was circular logic to the point of abject insanity. But it was the kind of insanity Church could deal with.

“Fine. Fine! Any place in particular you want her to go?”

“HOME!” Grif suddenly screamed. “Tell her to go back to Hawaii! Now! Yesterday if you can! Did you get Wyoming’s time machine thing? If you did, tell her to go home before she even got here!”

Church shook his head. “Two things: no we didn’t get it and that’s not how it works.”

“And we want her to come here!” Sarge said.

Grif snapped back towards Sarge. “WHAT?!”

“We can’t have a former Blue galavanting off into greener pastures! They might try to reform under some new banner different enough to avoid copyright! Like Aqua Team, or Eulb Team.”

“The fuck it eul…” Church paused. “Blue team backwards. Of course it is. Jesus fucking christ.”

“Besides, I thought you’d want to see your sister again.” Simmons said, putting a consoling hand on Grif’s shoulder. Grif shook it off.

“Not if it’s in the middle of all this bullshit! Do you have any IDEA how hard it was keeping her away from the law before now?!”

“Irrelevant!” Sarge said.

“We’re turning over evidence to court it’s VERY RELEVANT!”

Church threw up his hands and began walking off. “I can’t fucking deal with this. You stitch up Washington, I call Sister and tell her to come here. Deal?”

“Deal!”

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE SARGE!”

“Too late, I call no take-backs!”

“GODDAMMIT!”

Washington remained unconscious on the ground.

---

“... so long story short I need you to come to these coordinates.”

“Whatever, it was getting super boring around here anyway. You gonna send over a ride or something?”

“Uh… huh. Kinda… forgot about that part.”

“That’s fine. I’m really good at hitchhiking! I’ll just stick out my thumb, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll stick out the real goods. Those always get me rides,”

“Yeah… wait, what?”

“See ya when I get there, byyeee!!!”

They’d moved Washington into the former Red Base, which had been cleaned out pretty thoroughly. Scarily thoroughly, actually. If he hadn’t known better Church would have thought the bases were brand spanking new, fresh out of the box. Eerie, that was the word.

The barracks were apparently still good, not that Church knew for sure. Sarge was sticking to his guns on this one, no former Blues that weren’t prisoners allowed in Red Base. Goddamn lunatic, how the hell did Wash think he was smart? Probably should have taken that as a sign the foam was going funky.

In the meantime, Church had no idea what the fuck to do with himself. For the first time since what felt like weeks ago he had nothing pressing to do, no one to chase and no leads to follow. His feet wandered in the direction of Blue base, or maybe former Blue base? He vaguely wondered if Simmons had actually scrubbed the entire system or just the local server. Shouldn’t he know how Freelancer’s systems worked?

Well, he didn’t. So it was a pretty weak train of thought.

It wasn’t until Church had wandered into the base that he remembered what was waiting for him in there.

When he first registered the black, it didn’t look prone. Church didn’t see an empty shell of a machine, pockmarked and scarred and repaired over years of abuse, lying on the floor like an abandoned tin soldier. For a brief second he saw the Tex he remembered the best. Black armor still damaged but in a way that made her look badass and experienced instead of worn down, leaning against the wall like the whole world could come at her if they wanted, let ‘em fucking try.

But the image didn’t last. Church focused and saw what was, an abandoned husk. Worse than abandoned. Shucked aside. Like a goddamn peanut shell, like the body didn’t matter at all.

Anger boiled into existence out of nowhere, white hot and roiling, rioting through his systems in a sudden vicious frenzy.

“Fuck! Fuck ! FUCK!” he screamed, throwing his limbs into a furious kick into the cool metal wall to try and express the explosion happening inside him. Also like an explosion it barely lasted a few seconds before the rage left, leaving Church alone with the ringing base and a dent in his foot.

Great.

He wanted to collapse, just slide down the wall and sit there until the end of time. No more thinking, or processing, or random attacks from inside his own… not brain. He didn’t have a brain now and apparently never had a brain of his own to begin with. Fuck his mind was littered with fuckking pits .

He looked back at the body. Tex’s body. More Sarge’s work than Freelancer’s, more Tex’s repairs than Sarge’s work. If anything was Tex’s in the entire galaxy it was this body and the assault rifle still mag-stripped to its back.

Church stared at the body.

“... it’s a magic number.” he muttered to himself. Then he quickly turned around.

A base this nice probably had some kind of shovel tucked away somewhere.

---

It took five hours, not counting the time it took to find the shovel.

After about hour two Caboose wandered over. Church braced himself for an offer to help, or the usual chatter. But Caboose didn’t say anything. He stood and watched, didn’t even fidget or make his ‘standing around’ sound effects. Church waited for the watching to annoy him, but it never did. He’d never really bought into ‘companionable silence’ before, but that was the only phrase he could come up with. Even that didn’t fit all the way. It was too… solemn.

Church considered asking about Washington, but didn’t. There would be time for that later. Right now this was about Tex.

Church didn’t think about much as he shoveled. Nothing beyond the practical, at least. Turns out being a computer means you’re pretty good at digging functional holes. Six by three by six.

He didn’t have a coffin or anything like that. No real dignified way to actually get her body in the ground. So he didn’t even try. Church rolled her body over the side, where it flopped like a ragdoll in about the least respectful position imaginable. Part of him considered just burying her like that, thought it was kind of darkly hilarious, but Church couldn’t go through with it. Jumping down next to her, Church sorted her body in a lying down position first. That was the easy part. But he couldn’t decide what to do with her arms. Dead people were supposed to have them folded over their stomachs, right? Or was it their chests? Wait, that might have been mummies.

In the end he settled on folding them over her rifle. It didn’t look really neat, none of the fingers were in the places they were supposed to be, but it was close enough and he figured she’d appreciate the gesture.

Climbing out of the hole was kind of a bitch, the ground being soft enough to dig a pretty decent hole into meant the dirt crumpled when Church tried to climb it. Caboose caught him before he slid all the way back in though. Thank god for his stupid strength.

Him and Caboose stood on one side of a hole, accompanied by a shovel, a big pile of dirt, and an empty body. Neither of them said anything.

The last funeral he had for Tex didn’t feel nearly this final. Mostly he remembered it being about him and how Command refused to send them anything but toilet paper and MREs. It took a month to convince Vic to order a shovel, and the graves took another week on top of that. Even then the only reason they got them was because Tucker jumped in with some bullshit about needing to prepare for Halloween. In July.

The graves weren’t high art, but they were made out of rock. Church guessed the military didn’t have any shitty plastic ones on hand so they got the real graves anyway. Him and Tucker had each dug a hole, partly because Tucker didn’t really care about Tex and partly because Church refused flatly to dig his own grave. Caboose offered to help back then, but he’d been soundly shut down because Church was still pretty fucking pissed about the whole ‘being dead’ thing. So Caboose mostly watched and chattered about how he sometimes dug holes back on the farm with his sisters and how they were doing a very good job! Except Tucker.

Church didn’t remember Allison’s funeral.

Fuck, Church didn’t remember Allison . That was the weirdest part of all this. He knew, he had unassailable proof that what had happened to him was real, that Washington hadn’t been lying. But he still remembered Tex as his girlfriend, still remembered talking to her in a body, still remembered Private Jimmy getting beaten to death with his own skull. The memories still felt real. But the echoes in Washington’s mind while he had been entering in the codes, those had dug in. The name Allison and the pain attached to it, the meaning behind those numbers and words… he didn’t have all the pieces, but he had enough to know that whoever the Alpha had been copied from had lost Allison to something a lot more permanent than a destroyed robot body. Church wasn’t stupid.

For a minute him and Caboose just looked down at the hole, like both of them were waiting for someone else to say something. This is why you need rabbis or priests for funerals, cause the people actually losing someone never could say what needed to be said.

No surprise to anyone, Caboose broke the silence first. “Um. I don’t think you’re done yet. The dirt is still outside the hole.”

All things considered, it wasn’t a big deal. Barely the stupidest thing Caboose had said in the last twelve hours. But something violent and ugly convulsed in his brain and for a white second Church didn’t know anything at all.

The next second he was looking down at Caboose. That wasn’t right, why was he looking down?

Caboose was on his back, limbs splayed out to hold him up. Sprawled on the ground, like he didn’t know what he was doing there either. A shaky hand went up to the left side of his helmet. Dented. Dented concave in the entire left cheek.

Church glanced down at his hand. The fingers were fucked. A diagnostic popped up and helpfully informed him that everything below the wrist wasn’t responding anymore. A goddamn diagnostic. He couldn’t tell his hand was useless without a fucking diagnostic-

Sniff.

Oh no, Church thought, small and broken.

He tore his cameras away from this useless hunk of metal at the end of his arm and looked back down at Caboose. He was unlatching his helmet but the hydraulics weren’t responding the way they were supposed to; the right side was loose but the left side clung on. Church didn’t move to help him. Didn’t move to do anything.

Crack. The visor broke, a jagged scar, just as Caboose finally tore it away. A nasty cut on his cheek, already swelling into an ugly red, highlighted by yellow-green bruising. Church could see Caboose clench his jaw in pain and promptly unclench it when it made the pain worse.

He was crying. Silently, letting the tears fall without interference or comment. Caboose turned to Church.

“T-that hurt,” Caboose choked out.

Church thought about the mangled hand he couldn’t feel.

“A-aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?”

Church thought about crying without tears.

“Church?”

He turned away. Picked up the shovel in his still good left hand. The fingers weren’t responding, but they were still clenched. He could move his wrist. Should be enough. Church shoved the end of the shovel into his hand, prying apart his fingers. It made a noise like a can being tortured, but he kept at it.

Caboose sniffed again.

The hand was ugly and gross as hell, but it held good enough. Church walked over to the dirt pile and stuck in the shovel.

He flung the dirt over his shoulder. He heard soil hit metal, a pattering sound. Stuck in his shovel for another. Then another, then another.

Church didn’t hear Caboose leave.

Chapter Text

He woke up and didn’t open his eyes. If he opened his eyes he’d be blinded by sickly white, and if he breathed in he’d smell alcohol and sticky chemicals in the back of his throat. Moving would tighten the restraints, rub his wrists rawer; the questions and tests would begin again. Doctors would peck and poke at his brain, digging for secrets that he couldn’t know and wouldn’t say, never say, he’d die first.  

Except… no, that wasn’t right. There had been ravenous doctors before, but for months there had only been quiet nurses. A steady rotation of vague faces; some blank, some smiling kindly, some gossiping on headsets like he was a vegetable.

But that wasn’t right either. He’d started responding to the annoying ones, and that had moved him up from monitored intensive care to monitored less-intensive care. He could wake up and walk on his own, go jog and lift, begin to put his body and mind back together.

No, no, no, this was all feeling wrong, what was he missing-

“Up and at’em, temporary former Blue!” He heard fingers snapping in front of his face, “Need to check yer head for dents, dings, and other disfigurements!”

His hand moved before his brain had anything to add, like a snake. He was holding someone’s wrist, twisting it back until the bones creaked-

But he stopped. Why was he breaking someone’s wrist? Whose wrist was it?

Church had no idea.

No, Epsilon had no idea.

No no Alpha had- Leonard- David- Recovery One-

“Washington! This is no way to treat your physician!”

Wash opened his eyes.

Bright red armor started down at him. The armor sat in a metal folding chair at his bedside, one of his hands in Washington’s grip. Wash held his wrist twisted at a painful angle, but hadn’t pushed far enough to actually damage it. He couldn’t see through the visor, but Washington felt a considering, cautious gaze all the same.

While Wash tried to make sense of what he was seeing, the man in red armor shook free. Rotating his wrist, he said “Twitchy, ain’t ya?” Apparently the move didn’t concern him much, because the man in red was already leaning in again, reaching for Wash’s head.

Washington scrambled upright, sitting up for the first time and taking in his surroundings. The walls and floor were grey concrete, and there were a half dozen beds including his own; a few other chairs and a cheap plastic table were scattered in the empty space between the beds. It felt drab rather than sterile, and part of Washington unclenched ever so slightly in relief. Even more relieving was the sense of a solid surface against his back. Wash’s fingers clenched the scratchy and cheap sheets.

Cheap, uncomfortable, drab, concrete… Suddenly it clicked into familiarity. A Simulation outpost; Washington was in a sim base.

The Red soldier (he had to be Red Team with that armor) grunted in annoyance. “Son, this is getting ridiculous. Are ya a man or a jackrabbit in some kinda man-suit? Be honest, I could fix a suit a lot easier than a busted brain bucket.”

Shit, he must have fucked up a sim. Really, really fucked up a sim too, if Wash hadn’t been dragged back to the MOI as soon as he got hurt. South was never gonna let him live this down.

“What… what happened?” Wash finally said, reaching tentatively towards his skull. He had a headache, sure, but he didn’t feel any throbbing or soreness.

“Well if Mr. Fussy Pants would let me take a look, I could tell him! As is I’ve got Jackrabbit in a Suit, concussion, Victorian-esque fainting spell, or sour biofoam.”

“Biofo-?” and right as he shifted forward to ask what the red trooper was talking about, his side started buzzing with static, throbbing pain. It felt like a whole hive of bees rhythmically banging into his side. Wash reached for it on instinct and found a thick layer of bandages.

So. He’d gotten shot. Great. Washington was officially the worst Freelancer, Ever. Of all time.

He sighed and leaned against the concrete. It scratched at his bare back, but the discomfort grounded him, in its own way.

“My head doesn’t hurt like a concussion, I’ve… had a few of those over the years.”

The red soldier had been pretty unflappable so far, but something about what Washington said startled him. The helmet was clearly staring. Wash frowned.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Hmmm…” the red soldier leaned in closer. “You seem… different.”

Now that just made no sense. “How could I seem different? I’ve never met you.”

If the red soldier was startled before, now he’d been shocked still. Then with an abrupt clatter the soldier was on his feet, sticking a penlight in his face and about an inch from Washington’s nose.

“I knew it! This is a classic case of Amnesia! Simmons! Get me something heavy, I need to hit Washington in the head!”

Washington tried to squirm away, but the armor pinned him down. “Get off! That only works if getting hit in the head is what made me forget! We already know that’s not it!”

“And personality rejiggering too! The list of complications just keeps getting longer! Like an episode of El Hospital Detención!”

“Can you please just back up?! I don’t even know your name!” Washington shrieked.

Finally, Sarge leaned back and stopped trying to blind him. “Guess the old fashioned way is as good as any… Name’s Sarge. Do you know what year it is?”

“Of course! It’s-” and then Washington paused. It wasn’t that he didn’t know; it was that ten wildly different answers jammed up behind his teeth and couldn’t get out. “It’s… I…”

“2553,” Sarge said. “You’re currently occupin’ a bed in the Red base of Outpost 17, recoverin’ from getting shot in the gut during your mission.”

“My mission?” Washington felt his face scrunch up in confusion. “What was my mission?”

“Killin’ the Meta.”

When Washington was little, before he was Washington (and he knew it was his memory, he knew, he’d checked) living in a tiny apartment on the wrong side of the tracks, there’d been a horrific storm. For a while the shutters had held, even kept out the sound, and he’d played games with his family in the warm candlelight like nothing was wrong. But without even a creak of warning one of the windows burst like God himself had kicked it open; the wind and rain screamed its way inside, destroying the sense of safety as quickly as it blew out the candles.

That sensation of a storm he’d managed to forget for a little while tearing through everything, violent destruction of a peace that might as well have been fictional. That was what remembering everything felt like.

He wasn’t running a sim. Wash wasn’t in the Project anymore. The year was 2553 and everyone else was dead.

Washington’s nails dug into his palm, almost hard enough to bleed. “My name is Agent Washington,” he muttered under his breath, “I’m in Valhalla. The Meta is… dead. The Meta is dead.”

Sarge (how the hell had Wash forgotten Sarge of all people) settled back into his chair and for once, didn’t say anything. Washington focused on breathing for a little while.

After a couple minutes of in for seven, out for eleven, Sarge finally spoke up. “Ya with us again?”

Wash nodded, steadily this time. He leaned forward, presenting his head for examination and Sarge took the hint. Washington felt armored fingers in his hair and tensed up despite himself.

“You… handled that almost competently,” Washington said, thinking about anything but someone examining his head, “Almost. The amnesia diagnosis was a strike.”

Sarge snorted. “Not the first time I’ve seen a man wake up confused. Although… there is usually more obvious head trauma involved.” Sarge backed off, nodding to himself. “You’re clean, by the way.”

Washington stared at Sarge. “Really. You can tell if I’m concussed through… I’m guessing phrenology? Or something equally ridiculous.”

“I know what a concussed man acts like, and you ain’t it, so quit with the back talk!”

Washington attempted to picture Grif or Simmons heavily concussed, but couldn’t come up with anything more obviously irrational than their standard operating procedure.

“Yep, that confirms it. Rotten foam; can be nasty by itself, and you let it thaw too. Keep an eye out for any mutations and/or super human abilities that could emerge from not following directions that thoroughly.”

Some small part of Washington that never shook off being the rookie said ‘Wait, has biofoam had an expiration date this whole time?! No one told me that!’ The rest watched Sarge pack up the various medkit implements back into their casings. Some still had flecks of blood on them.

“Cleaned it out and stitched ya back up, but unless yer keen on it opening again I’d suggest you settle in. Two days, at least!”

Wash balked. “T-Two days?! You can’t be serious! It’s just-”

“A gut shot!” Sarge cut in, “And might I add you didn’t seem to be occupyin' the healthy side of the fence before. Ignoring injuries for the sake of the mission is one thing, but unless I’ve missed somethin’, mission is accomplished. Dying after a mission is ridiculous!”

“But-!”

“No buts about it! Already made deals with Former Blues regarding your continued existence upright, going back on that would be playing right into their cheating hands.”

Washington pinched at the bridge of his nose and sighed. “What are you-”

“It’s obvious! I follow my instincts and leave you hanging, or poison you with the iocane powder I’ve saved for just such occasions, that consistency would lead to Once Blue Plans continuing along their tracks. But if I act against their assumptions, any nefarious strategies they’d concocted will collapse around their ears!”

Washington looked back up at Sarge, arms crossed and chin held high, absolutely shining with pride at his own cleverness. It was so much all at once, Wash found he could only bring himself to comment on one aspect of the insanity.

“… Iocane powder isn’t a real thing.”

“Minor details!”

Washington straightened up and glared at Sarge’s visor. “I can force you to let me go.”

Sarge scoffed. “Why don’t you try standin’ up first; then we’ll talk about forcing anyone to do anything.”

Wash went to do just that, but as he moved to lift the sheets away from him he felt a breeze in a place he shouldn’t have. For the first time since he came too, Washington looked under the covers and past the bandages. There he found a pretty significant wrinkle in his plan.

“Sarge. Where are my clothes.”

For his part, Sarge looked honestly confused by the question. “What does that have to do with anythin’? Come on, try to stand up so I can prove my point about yer total-lack-of blood pressure.”

Washington pulled the army blanket up his chest. “Get me my clothes, now.”

Sarge chuckled. “Don’t think I will. See, if you’re shy enough you’re not letting me see what I got a good long look at putting yer insides back where God intended, then I’m gonna take full advantage.”

“Sarge!”

“Now son there’s no need to be ashamed! Hell I’d say there’s plenty a reasons to be the exact opposite-”

“SARGE!” Washington cried, face burning crimson. This was ridiculous, utterly goddamn ridiculous.

“Hehehe… shrieky one, ain’t ya?”

Washington sputtered hopelessly. He tried to stand (blanket still held close to his chest) to properly communicate how outrageous and immature this whole argument was, but right as he did a wave of vertigo knocked Wash right back down again.

“There it is,” Sarge said, impossibly smug. “My point been made?”

Washington stared at the floor for a while, then reluctantly shifted back into the bed. “A day. I’ll rest for a day. That’s the most I can risk and more than enough recovery time, if you get the healing unit from my armor and bring it here.”

Sarge rolled his entire helmet in exaggerated exasperation. What was it with these guys and making body language so obvious? “Whatever you say, Agent Freckles.”

Wash ignored the nickname while simultaneously blushing an entire shade darker. “What’s the situation? Has anyone come looking around here yet?”

Sarge leaned back into his folding chair, which groaned a little under the shift. “Nope. Been pretty quiet, actually. Suppose those guys we took out didn’t bother reportin’ in before they got toasted.”

That was the real trouble with Sarge. Ever since the demotion had put them on the ‘same side’, he’d swung wildly between utterly delusional and surprisingly sensible. There was nothing to get a hold of, no baseline to work with. How do you deal with a person like that?

Especially when that person handed you an open MRE, after he casually talked about plans to possibly poison you with a fake drug from an ancient movie.

Great.

Sarge shoved a spoon into Wash’s hands. While he was working up the nerve to ingest again Sarge pulled another MRE from… somewhere and went to take off his helmet. That gave Washington pause. He’d never seen Sarge’s face before, had he? Just as Wash considered the idea of putting a real face to the voice, the helmet came off with a little hiss of releasing air.

In a few ways Sarge was exactly what Washington would have pictured. Military buzz cut, worn down features, the epitome of ‘grizzled’ and all the implications that came with it. He had a scar through his eyebrow and some grey five o’clock stubble, though Wash suspected he’d somehow have the same amount of fuzz immediately after shaving.

His eyes were a light brown, like coffee dosed with creamer, or caramel. God Wash missed caramel. He would have happily stabbed someone in the throat for a good chunk of caramel right then. Too bad all he had was this MRE that might or might not have been poisoned with a powder that might or might not exist at all. Sarge had dug into his own meal with gusto, but that didn’t mean anything.

As Washington tied to make up his mind, Grif and Simmons walked in.

“Armor’s locked u-” Simmons froze almost mid-step as he made eye contact with Wash. “Oh. You’re awake.”

“I am.” Washington was going for ‘acknowledgment’ be he suspected he’d landed on ‘stating the obvious’. “You locked up my armor?”

Grif strolled to another folding chair across the room from Wash’s bed. He plopped down as casual as you please and the chair groaned in complaint. Grif pulled a can of soda from a compartment in his armor meant for ammo storage, which was a lousy place for soda on top of irresponsible. Then Grif took off his helmet and thoughts of snack storage flew right out of Washington’s head.

If Sarge looked like Wash expected him to, Grif utterly did not. Longer dark hair pulled back into a short and tight ponytail, limp and greasy looking in the florescent light, dark brown eyes, darker brown skin… sort of. One half of his face had a dramatic skin graft, lily white to the point of looking translucent in comparison and dusted with freckles even worse than Washington. The hell had happened there?

“We sure did. How else to keep your fancy high tech gear safe and sound?” Grif said with a challenging smugness. He snapped the tab and took some long pulls of soda before the fizz had even settled. Finishing that, Grif burped and caught Wash staring at him.

“Take a picture man, it’ll last longer. I know my good looks can be pretty disarming, but still. Manners and all that.” The worst part was that Grif said it like he was giving sincere advice, and Washington felt like a doofus in the face of it. The fact he thought ‘doofus’ instead of ‘idiot’ or ‘moron’ didn’t help that feeling, either.

Breaking eye contact, Washington saw that Simmons hadn’t moved far from the doorway, settling in a lean against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked like a person acting in the role of someone annoyed and mistrustful but not really understanding the motivation; going through the motions without commitment. It was odd, because so far as Wash could tell Simmons had every right to be suspicious of him and his complete non-answers.

Simmons wasn’t saying anything, or joining the helmetless party, so Washington turned his attention back to Grif. He pointedly looked Grif in the eyes, which Wash realized upon closer examination didn’t match. They were both brown, but one a significantly lighter shade than the other; dark chocolate versus milk chocolate.

“Army donations?” Wash said, leaning back against the pillow and wall. Even with his skills, Wash didn’t fancy his chances taking on three people in armor with guns, not while naked and woozy.

Grif snorted into his soda. “Yeah, I got on the list ahead of Johnny Yes Sir and Melissa Yes Ma’am. Hey Simmons, why don’t you tell him the whole story? You were awake for more of it.”

Simmons stiffened. “I’d rather not.”

Sarge, who had been totally focused on his MRE until all of it disappeared into his mouth, finally looked up. “Got something you’re ashamed of, Simmons?”

Simmons somehow managed to lose his balance leaning against a wall. He flailed for a second before righting himself and falling into a stuttering salute. “N-No sir! I just feel it’s personal and that maybe we shouldn’t share… important information with a… non-red?... person?”

It didn’t sound convincing to Wash at all, but Sarge considered and eventually nodded. “If ya wanna be a shy stick in the mud, that’s yer prerogative. You baby.”

Simmons sighed through his nose. Washington could tell because it made a slightly different crackle in the speaker, and back in the day it’d been Carolina’s modus operandi for expressing her more subdued frustrations. “Yes, sir. Thank you sir.”

Grif mimed a whip crack motion with his soda and provided sound effects for emphasis. Simmons abruptly rounded on him. “Oh, just because I’m being cautious and looking for permission from my superior officer, that makes me whipped?”

“Yep. You are utterly and completely whipped.”

“I am NOT!”

Grif tossed the empty can vaguely in the direction of a trash can, missing by about 3 feet. “Are too.”

“Am not! And pick that up, this isn’t even our base!”

“Is now, I called dibs.” Grif said.

Washington chewed absently, watching the show with a mild interest. Now that he didn’t have anything pressing to do aside from sit there and wait for a chance to get his armor back, Wash found the arguing less frustrating and more… honestly amusing.

Wait… chewed?

He blinked, and stared down at the MRE Wash’s body had started working through without his brain’s knowledge. His body helpfully and forcefully reminded Washington that his brain could barely remember the last time he’d eaten and explained it’d made an executive decision to stuff the paranoia and keep the food coming.

Well, Washington thought, I didn’t taste anything. That’s normal for an MRE. Shrugging, Wash stuck the fork back into the mush and submitted himself to the whims of the crazy people.

---

So apparently using an already damaged appendage for extended periods of hard labor was a bad idea.

“Come on you stupid piece of shit-” Church muttered, pushing against the head of the shovel with his foot. As soon as he’d finished putting the dirt back in the hole he’d discovered the consequences for his DIY hand fix; the shovel was really, really goddamn stuck. Exerting what the schematics were telling Church was maximum force wasn’t budging the thing a fucking inch out of his hand. “Come one, come on, come on-”

And then the blade snapped off. Church lost his balance in surprise and fell flat on his back; the former-shovel-now-stick still stuck in a death grip.

Looking up at the blue sky like its existence was mocking him, Church said “Dammit.” He glanced over at the blade (head? The whole metal piece that actually dug holes) resting some feet away.

“Hmm… maybe if I jam that into my goddamn stupid robot brain, I’ll actually die and never have to deal with this bullshit ever again.”

It was a tempting thought for about a minute. Contemplating suicide less than a day after you turned down a perfectly heroic death made the whole venture seem… pointless. Instead Church stared at the sky some more. Blue. White clouds. Hardly alien at all. If Church didn’t know better, he’d think he was cloud watching back on earth like Church did when he was a kid, or with-

With...

Church violently dropped that entire train of thought off a cliff. No. He wasn’t thinking about that. Church thunked his utterly busted hand against his helmet to emphasize the point. Putting it that close to his face reminded Church of how busted it was. Almost impressively so, the kind of work he’d expect out of Caboose. And in a way, Caboose had been… involved-

Caboose slunk off like a fucking kicked puppy, all slumped over and sniffling and shit, what the fuck kind of person are you, what kind of fucking bastard-

“OH COME ON!” Church screamed, “I shot him in the fucking foot once, can you goddamn chill?!”

Shooting him in the foot didn’t make him cry, you waste of-

“Aaauuug, shut up.” Church flopped his arm over his visor, blocking out the sky. Scrambling for a distraction, anything else to think about, Church landed on something… weird.

He slowly uncovered his optics and looked back into the blue. “Hey… God?”

The sky didn’t say anything of course. Church didn’t expect it to. But…

“I’m gonna pretend I believe in this bull for a second. Pretend that I ever went to service. I didn’t, of course; whoever the hell did. Leonard Church Senior? Eck, no. That’s just confusing. That Asshole went to service with his parents ‘cause he had to and never looked back after college. But I’m a different person, right? First thing they tell you about Smart AI in Basic when they go asking around for permission to harvest your brain. It’s not signing up to get round two at life. It’s someone else. Like a kid.”

Some weird space cricket chirped in the distance.

“So! Clean slate. Since this is my first time pretending to talk to a fake dude in the sky. Hi. I’m Leonard Church. I have no idea what the fuck I’m even doing anymore.”

The cricket chirped again, and then fell silent.

“It’s… okay. I didn’t actually want to die. Hip hip hoo-fucking-ray. Except now there’s all-” Church waved his wrecked hand with the shovel handle in it around, “this.”

“How do you process that? ‘Hey Church, you know those memories you’ve got? About having a life and an identity? Those are all fake! You can’t tell, but trust me they totally are!’ Like-… like if Keanu Reeves found out about the Matrix and then nothing else happened to him for the rest of his life, that’d be fucked, right? He just... knows now! Sees Agent Smith walking down the fucking street eating a goddamn bagel, remembers that interrogation with th-the slug thing? What was even up with that? But even with the evidence, Keanu’s still in the Matrix. Food tastes real, sex feels real, drugs hit real. It all feels fucking real! The fuck is he supposed to do with that?!”

Church slammed the shovel handle into the soft ground. It didn’t make much sound, and he didn’t feel it.

“… I know you aren’t there. This is me talking to air with some pretentious wrapping paper. But… if you… if I could get a red pill… I…”

A breeze shifted the grass around him a bit. Then everything went still again. Nothing happened.

“Yeah, well.” Church sat up, and with a bitter edge to his voice muttered “Thanks for nothing.”

---

After spending an hour alone with Grif and Simmons, Washington desperately missed Sarge. They didn’t act especially different around their commanding officer, but at least when Sarge was in the room they didn’t play cards. Bastardized, horrible, infuriating cards.

It had started as a game of Go Fish about ten minutes after Sarge wandered off to ‘Patrol the perimeter’, whatever he thought that meant. But through a weird wandering alchemy of conversation and boredom the game had morphed into some hideous combination of Texas Hold-Em, Blackjack, Old Maid, and Calvin Ball. Grif and Simmons argued over made up rules, drew different amounts of cards every turn, seemed to create victories and loses out of nothing but their ability to bullshit each other.

“Take ten, I’ve got a red,” Grif said.

“Fucker,” Simmons replied. He then picked up one of the now 3 separate decks and started going through it. Looking for a ten, probably. “Show me the red to prove it.”

Grif displayed a card with a flourish and Simmons’ helmet tilted up in triumph.

“It’s a face card. You’ve gotta do an impression for it to count.” Simmons said, smug grin obvious in his voice.

“Bullshit I do, I played a King for acting immunity 4 turns ago.” Grif pointed to a spot on the table. Simmons’ smug posture was unaffected, and he pointed to another small pile of cards.  

“Kings are good for 3 turns, or did you forget spades were in the ruling spot?”

Grif sighed. “Only hoping you had.” He rolled his shoulders. “Any requests?”

“Hmm…” Simmons glanced over in Wash’s direction. “What about Agent Washington?”

Grif followed Simmons’ helmet and raised an eyebrow. “What about Agent Washington?”

“Come on, he’s totally asleep.”

Washington was not asleep, but faking it was easy enough if you knew what you were doing. Deep semi-even breaths with some variance to seem more natural, and a little undignified drooling for good measure. The benefits were numerous: information gathering, element of surprise if he wanted to make a move, and not having to talk to people. Especially these people. Pretending to sleep with an eye partway open was trickier, but Grif and Simmons weren’t sitting very close by; maybe they hadn’t even noticed.

Simmons turned his attention back to Grif. “You’re not scared, are you?” he said.

“What, of the freelancer with questionable at best grip on his sanity? Nooo, I gave up on self-preservation years ago. And like you can talk, you won’t even take off your helmet when he’s in the room!

Simmons ignored the comment. “Sarcasm isn’t an impression, and if you don’t do it you’ve gotta take the ten.”

“Fine.” Grif leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. Then, with a slow sort of deliberate effort, he leaned forward. “‘I’m going to growl and threaten everyone even though you’re supposed to be on my side, and act all betrayed when people ask questions. Then I’ll ask you personal shit like it’s not even a big deal, because that makes sense.”

Simmons seemed unimpressed. “Come on, you can totally do better than that.”

“Just warming up. Ahem, ‘Everyone except for me is a crazy idiot. Now stand over there while I, the sane one, fight planes by myself and purposefully go places where I get shot by Metas. What? No I don’t need medical attention, what are you talking abooooo-” Grif executed a perfectly overdramatic swoon to the side without even standing up.

That performance earned a nod. “Better, but you could put more effort into the voice.”

Grif rolled his eyes. “Good enough?”

“Alright, alright.” Simmons put the ten in his hand. He studied his cards for a moment, but instead of continuing the game Simmons glanced over towards Washington’s “sleeping” body.

“Grif… what do you think about all this?”

Grif didn’t even look up from his hand. “Gonna have to be more specific.”

“The AI stuff. Dragging us into it.”

“Dude, I could not care less. Sooner he’s out of our hair the better.”

Simmons put down his cards and shifted more into his staring. Washington slowly and subtly closed his eye, just in case. “But what happens after he leaves? We go back to Blood Gulch and pretend none of this happened?”

“S’how we handled all the other times freelancers tangled us up in their bullshit.”

Simmons hummed like he didn’t have a response but wished he did.

“Dude, this is bothering you way more than it should. It’s just another chapter in the crazy misadventure that has become our lives. This’ll blow over and then Sarge will drag us back to Red Base, same as it ever was.”

“Same as it ever was?” Simmons replied, a small smirk in his voice.

“Same as it ever was.” Washington heard the tab pop on another soda. Where was Grif even getting them? “Letting the days go by and all that jazz.”

Simmons started to laugh, but then stilled. “Hey… before this all started… we were assigned to different bases. So…”

Grif to his credit caught on to the train of thought very quickly. “Huh. Maybe we’ll go back to Rat’s Nest instead.”

A chair, probably Simmons’, creaked. “Think they’ll still want to kill us?

Grif gulped down some soda. “Maybe? Shit’s weird there, like they actually care about the whole Red vs. Blue thing. Blues seemed to too.”

Simmons’ sighed. “You know I hate when you do that.”

“Blame the train wreck that is the English language.” With a few more obnoxious gulps and an even more obnoxious belch Grif finished his soda. “Either they take us back or they don’t. No real sense worrying about it.”

“It makes total sense worrying about it! How can you plan for things if you don’t worry about them?”

Grif scoffed “Uh, you don’t? Plans never work. Soon as you plan something it all goes to shit, and what’d planning get you? Nothing, that’s what.”

“You’re applying the Unspoken Plan Guarantee to real life. And all wrong. No wonder you were the worst sergeant ever.”

“You say worst; I say ‘ahead of my time’.” The sound of a can hitting a concrete wall followed the pronouncement.

“Tell that to the guys who were going to execute us.” Simmons’ chair scraped against the floor, and Washington risked a quick glance to get a lay of the land. Grif hadn’t moved, but Simmons had evidently decided that two cans on the floor was just beyond the pale. As he put them in the trash, Grif got a thoughtful look on his face.

“Hey… speaking of that, what were you gonna tell me back there?” he said, leaning back on two chair legs.

Simmons jerked like he’d gone from 5th gear to 1st in the in the middle of a firefight, knocking over the entire trash can and spilling its contents everywhere. “UH… What are you? Talking about?!” he said in some desperate imitation of causal.

“Dude. Come on. Voice crack that bad means you know exactly what I’m talking about. I told you about the debt thing, just confess whatever it was so you can get it off your chest and I can deal with it.”

“I… uh… I don’t think it's the right time.”

Grif considered that for a moment, then lazily grabbed his battle rifle from under the table and pointed it vaguely to the left of Simmons. “How about now?”

“You can’t hit the broad side of barn, not gonna cut it.”

Grif shrugged and lowered the weapon. “Well it can’t be THAT bad. You’re too much of a boy scout.”

“Fuck yeah I am,” Simmons said, cleaning up the trash he spilled, “all the way up to Eagle scout.”

“Don’t sound so proud Simmons, it somehow makes you even lamer than you already were.”

“Nope. Boy Scouts sucked and I beat it anyway. Got all the merit badges I needed without any strenuous physical activity. Take that, Mr. Blinkerson!”

Grif groaned, long and loud. “You nerd cheat coded your way through boy scouts. My god Simmons, are there no depths left unplunged?”

Simmons finished cleaning up and shot Grif a look. “I don’t think that’s a word.”

“I don’t think your face is a word.”

“Whatever. I just thought of a way I could nerd cheat code my way through the Rat’s Nest thing, so ha!” Simmons punctuated his declaration by dropping the now full trash can back onto the floor.

“What? How?”

Simmons made his way towards the door as he talked. “I’m going to call them in advance and say you got demoted. That way they’ll know you were punished and if we get sent back, no hard feelings!”

“Whatever you say Simmons. If you wanna stall my glorious victory at cards, I can wait. I can wait aaaaaall day.”

Simmons flipped Grif the bird and stalked off, and for a second Washington thought about attempting to sneak past Grif and find his clothes and armor. Then Grif turned and looked him direct in the eyes.

“You can stop pretending dude. I know sleeping, and you’ve been awake the whole time”

Washington blinked. “Why didn’t you say anything? Tell Simmons?”

Grif shrugged. “Eh, he gets weird around you, too much hassle.” Before Wash had time to really parse that, Grif added “So you wanna get this demotion thing over with?”

Washington felt his mouth drop open. “Here? Now?!”

“Well if I can deprive Sarge the satisfaction of seeing it happen…”

Wash didn’t know what to say to that. So instead he propped himself up on the wall behind the bunk and let silence settle over the room. Grif waited like he was perfectly happy to sit and do nothing for the rest of time, which would an impressive intimidation tactic if Washington thought it was intentional at all.

“... By the power vested in me by Project Freelancer, I hereby demote you to Minor Junior Private, Negative Third Class.”

Grif smirked. “Is that even how ranks work?”

“Not remotely.”

“Cool.”

Washington still didn’t really have a grip on how the sim troopers operated, but for the first time he felt like he maybe had sort of a sense of at least one of them. Maybe. Could have been the leftover effects from the blood loss.

At that moment, Simmons wandered in, looking distant and disturbed. Washington could tell because for the first time, Simmons wasn’t wearing his helmet.

The reason for the earlier hesitance was obvious. Half of Simmons’ face was cybernetic; a dimmed and dirty chrome from being in his helmet all day, but obviously well cared for. The plating wasn’t especially high tech or impressive looking, but there was a sense of effort in the way the metal brow worked to mirror the one on his other side. His pale, incredibly freckled other side. Wash stole another quick glance and Grif’s obvious graft and put a few pieces together. Obviously not enough pieces, because who in their right mind would use donated pieces when cybernetics were obviously available? But it did shine some new light on Simmons’ aborted confession all the same.

Simmons scratched at his hair, bright red and tightly curled, absently. Washington got the distinct impression that Simmons had taken off his helmet specifically to rub his fingers in his scalp. “They’re…” he swallowed, “they’re all dead.”

Grif turned around. “What?”

Simmons stopped staring at the floor and looked at Grif. “I... I called the base. An investigator from some… Committee, or something? Picked up. Said she was going through the bodies, and they were killed by ‘explosives and a bladed weapon’. So… two guesses who that was.”

Washington felt a squirming in his gut, but before he could examine the emotion too much Grif broke the grim silence.

“Huh,” he said. “That sucks.”

Simmons looked honestly stunned. “T-that SUCKS?! Can’t you muster up any empathy at all?! You lived there for like a year! You were the SERGEANT!”

Grif leaned back in his chair again. “Simmons, can you name literally one person from that base?”

“Oh come on, there was-...” Without his helmet Simmons’ expressions were painfully easy to read. Washington could almost see the search function turning up no results like words were being displayed over his head. “Uh… hold on a second…”

“Hey, how’s that glass house looking? Careful about all the rocks!”

“Oh shut up!” Simmons shot back, “Doesn’t it bother you even a little?”

Grif’s expression turned deadpan. “They were going to kill us, and the thing that took em out is dead. ‘Scuse me if I can’t shed some tears in their names.”

Simmons obviously didn’t have a response to that, because he turned to Washington. “Are you sure the Meta’s dead? Absolutely for real no take backs dead?”

Wash nodded firmly. “There’s no way it survived the E.M.P., not that close to the center blast.”

Simmons didn’t look very assured, but not quite as nervous as before.

“Okay, but… Church survived.”

And there is was. Washington bit his lip, and decided to make his first leap of faith since he tried to save South’s life.

“I… Years ago in the project I got outfitted with an experimental short range E.M.P. My armor was obviously upgraded so I was immune to the effects, but other members so my-” Wash’s voice caught for a half-second, but he pushed past it, “team could still get fried in the blast by mistake. They took it back to the lab and I never saw it again.”

Washington fell silent, waiting for Grif and Simmons to react. Grif got there first.

“Holy shit you forgot. You literally forgot your armor was emp proof,” Grif said, absolutely gleeful. “Simmons, h-he,” Grif snorted, shoulders shaking, “Agent Fucking Washington got in your face because he didn’t want to look like an idiot!” Grif said, rapidly dissolving into hysterical laughter.

Washington squared his shoulders and took the laughter with as much dignity as he could muster sitting in a sim trooper bed butt naked. Simmons wasn’t laughing, but he did look… disappointed?

“Really?” Simmons said, “That’s it?”

“What?”

“Well when you kept avoiding the question I thought it was something like, sinister! Or at least interesting, like that you’d been lying to whole time to turn us against the actual good guys, or that you’d been brainwashed by the enemy. Now I find out it’s because you forgot about an armor feature? Way to take all the intrigue out!”

Grif settled out of his laughing fit long enough to interject. “Better watch out Washington, Simmons is gonna go join the Blues again just to make up for how boring that reveal was!”

Simmons walked over and smacked Grif in the back of the head. “ANYWAY…” he said, glaring while Grif rubbed at his head, “That means what you said about Church was true?”

Washington nodded.

Simmons thought about it. “That’s… huh. You know a lot of things make more sense, but an equal amount make even less than they did before.”

Washington snorted. “Welcome to my life,” he said with a sardonic grin.

Grif cut in, “It it’s all the same, I think I’ll turn down that generous offer. Your life seems like it’s bullshit.”

Wash leaned back into the bed. “Yeah… yeah it kind of is.”

---

The kitchen in Blue Base was basic and bare, therefore about 3 times nicer than the place food got made back at Blood Gulch. A full sized fridge stood in the corner, a stovetop that looked functional, and actual wooden cupboards.  Plenty of storage space, some of which could currently be holding a toolbox.

Church walked into the kitchen and tried desperately not to feel like an idiot. This was a Blue Team base, Blue team got all the crazies. Crazies put shit in weird places. Quid Pro Quo, there was nothing stupid about looking for the toolbox in the kitchen. Especially after looking in every other place a toolbox logically would have been. Who stored their shovel someplace different from the rest of their tools? Someone crazy enough to put a toolbox in the kitchen, that’s who.

Despite Church’s rock solid reasoning, he still felt embarrassed opening a cupboard and finding boxes of MREs and one box of cereal. Brand name sugar cereal too, Church couldn’t imagine a team that trusted each other enough to not hide that shit. He debated taking the box, but the follow up question of what exactly an AI in a robot body would do with a box of cereal quickly put an end to that idea.

Okay, one down, a bunch left to go. One of these had to have a toolbox in them. Maybe some tools without a box, Church wasn’t picky. Even a claw hammer would be a better way of getting his hand out of this shovel handle than just pulling at it.

Door number two had a lot of tupperware, but no tools. Door number three had a single dusty ass measuring cup and exactly zero tools. Door number four was empty, because fuck Church’s life, right?

That left door number five. Church gripped the handle and yanked it open, ripping off the bandaid.

Empty. Well, no, there was a box of cigarettes, but it sure as fuck felt empty to Church. Growling in frustration Church slammed the door shut with enough force to crack the wood, then punched it with his shovel hand for good measure. This was fucking ridiculous! Blood Gulch Blue Base had a goddamn toolbox, how the hell did this place have a magic person flinger but no hammer?!

Church stomped out of the kitchen, fuming and mumbling curses. If there weren’t any tools in the kitchen, that left precisely one location someone could have put them. The closet in the barracks. Fantastic, digging around in dead people’s personal shit was exactly the kind of pick-me-up Church needed.

Just thinking about it put an extra oomph into the churning sensation Church had in his midsection, where his stomach would be in a normal person. But Church didn’t have a stomach to get sick to, so what the hell? Robots shouldn’t feel gross.

“Maybe it’s the… what’s it called?” Church pondered. “When you expect to get sick so much your brain makes it happen. Pueblo? Polio? P-Something effect…”

He’d heard this before, somewhere. Not being able to answer the question was driving Church nuts, but then Church remembered. He was a computer; didn’t that mean he could look trivia shit like this up? In a database or whatever?

As Church mulled it over, he arrived at the last closet in the base. If there weren’t tools in here, he was screwed. Church glared down at the door like it could be intimidated into giving him what he wanted (like he had a face to glare with) and threw the door open.

Well, good news: the closet wasn’t empty.

Bad news: it was completely goddamn full.

Boxes of crap took up literally square inch of space, with miscellaneous garbage squeezed wherever it could fit. Dealing with all of it without two hands was going to be a production.

… Guess I can figure out that Whatever-Effect thing. Not like opening boxes took up a lot of brainpower anyway. So while church dragged out the first box from the top and started digging through the contents (books, pictures, rocks, junk) he devoted some processing power towards answering his questions. It felt… easy. Natural to multitask.

A lot less easy was interacting with the strange new dimension his head had now. Digging around back there felt dangerous, like poking at the neurons in charge of keeping his heart beating. But Church could dig around. It was all… there, wide open now that he cared to look at it.

Should stop soon, before I break something.

Picking up the mental pace, Church carefully avoided everything that looked/felt important and dug around some more. There was data back there, but he couldn’t get a sense of how much or what it meant without going deeper.

Probably just junk. I’ve got better things to do.

Except… he didn’t. Church glanced down at the third box out of at least a dozen, stuffed to the brim with knitted socks and yarn. Church was doing everything he cared to already. Sticking his hands back into the yarn (maybe these weirdos hid tools in there), Church probed further into the data. As he looked closer, most of it was random logs. Planet atmo conditions, some 20^th century movie trivia, every known species of alligator… random junk.

Totally useless and boring, not worth paying attention to, stop looking.

But maybe somewhere in there was the answer to Church’s dumb question, the Something Effect-

Stop looking. Now.

Church paused. He’d been pulling down the fourth box when the thought struck like a static shock.

“… What-”

Stop looking Emergency Protocol 3.47 Engaged stop looking stop looking stOP LOOKING IT’S BAD TO LOOK STOP AND MOVE ON AND FORGET FORGET FORGET-

Church fell forward, dropped the box, caught himself on the doorframe and held on like a drowning man. Jesus Christ, everything twisted, hurt, vague impulses mutated into impossible compulsions in microseconds, more programming, more fucking programming, foreign, invasive, not his, but Church couldn’t ignore it. The pounding call to Forget Forget Forget rang in his head like a battering ram, screaming twisting his mind into a pretzel with the sheer force, twisting and pounding and twisting and Forget Forget Forget-

Maybe he could forget, just long enough to stop hurting, just a little whil-

THUNK!

It all stopped, cut off and frozen in sheer bewilderment. Church’s body did have optics, and those optics did have shutters. It wasn’t 1-1 with blinking, but the same principle applied. Church blinked and stared at the inside of a bucket, which had apparently fallen on his head like some kind of ridiculously too large hat. In moving around the boxes and then violently slamming into the doorframe, Church had knocked it loose from whatever precarious position it’d occupied before.

Church smacked the bucket away with his shovel hand and landed in the box full of yarn some feet away. Church turned to look into the closest again (because literally fuck trying to process what just happened to him, fuck it fucking running) Church saw that the bucket had been casting a shadow over a small back corner, behind the boxes. Tucked away in that corner, hidden by everything else, was a pole wrapped in fabric. A very familiar pole and a very familiar fabric.

The Blue Flag.

For a long moment Church just looked at it. It was a flag, the fuck did he care? None of that shit mattered anyway. But instead of grabbing another box and continuing his search, or checking out the box he’d dropped earlier, Church carefully reached in with his good hand and pulled the flag out of the clutter. It looked gross. A wrinkled dusty mess. Church would have bet money it smelled as bad as it looked, and could have lost on the grounds it smelled even worse than that. He jerked the flag around, snapping and flopping the fabric every which way. Dust fell off in waves so thick the air turned grey. How long had these Blues hidden their flag back there? Wasn’t that cheating?

The flag still looked wrinkled as hell, but out here in the open it was… better. A little. Almost good enough.

“Know where you go, at least.” Church said, turning and walking away from the half cleared out closet.

---

Washington had a black 3 of Diamonds and was about to call for the Bank of Kings to flip when Sarge marched in with Caboose, who was wearing a blindfold. Sarge was wearing his helmet again, holding Caboose’s arms behind his back, but from where Wash was sitting Caboose didn’t look restrained in any other way, free to move on his own. Hell Sarge was only leading him with one hand, the other arm occupied by Caboose’s helmet.

Caboose himself had a mop of black curly hair, looser than Simmons’, and tan skin. No freckles he could see, and a wider set nose, but without seeing Caboose’s eyes it was hard to tie it all together.

“Do I get to hit the piñata yet? I am very good at breaking it on the first try!”

“Can it! Your conditional permission to be in the heart of Red Team can be revoked at any moment, and I will not hesitate to exact the punishment due to any enemy found under our roof!”

Caboose tilted his head and frowned. “But I am not under a roof, I am under a blindfold.”

Sarge paused. “... Diabolical.”

Wash was about to ask what this whole mess was about when he saw the huge dent in Caboose’s helmet. Looking back at his face, Washington saw what he missed before; under the blindfold Caboose’s left cheek was doing its very best impression of a peach having an incredibly rough day. There was a small gash in the middle of it all, but most of it was an intensely purple bruise about the size of a coaster. Wash winced sympathy; that had to sting.

Grif wasn’t as observant. “Another one? Seriously? Come on Sarge, they aren’t even Blue Team anymore. You can’t keep taking them prisoner!”

“Nonsense!” Sarge said, roughly steering Caboose to sit on a bed across from Washington. “Possession is 9/10s of the law, and clearly they are in our possession! No court in the galaxy would convict us.”

“Every court,” Simmons muttered, laying down his Silent Trap Card for the round, “Every court in the galaxy would convict us.”

Sarge looked up at Simmons. “What was that Simmons?” he said, glare obvious in his voice.

Simmons sat up straighter and turned to face him. “Nothing sir!”

Washington sat up and resigned himself to being the only one interested in asking real questions. “What happened?”

Sarge answered first. “Caught this fella skulking around red base, throwing a strange series of objects out into the ocean. Finding that mighty suspicious, I took him prisoner! And seeing as he already had his helmet off, I was finally able to use that neat blindfold trick people do in the movies.”

Caboose folded his hands in his lap and twiddled his thumbs. “Ah, yes. I was throwing rocks, and Sarge found me, and I am here waiting for the piñata.”

Washington pressed on. “What happened before that? To your face, Caboose?”

Caboose frowned. “See, um, there was a tiny little accident. Church put his hand in the place that… my face was. Very hard. But everyone agrees, it’s nobody’s fault!”

Somehow Wash doubted that. “Alpha hit you?”

“No!” Caboose violently shook his head, “Not he did not! … Tucker did it.”

Washington blinked. “Who?”

Caboose waved a hand dismissively. “Someone stupid. He’s not here right now.”

“But he’s the one that hit you.”

“... yes?”

Wash sighed. On the one hand, this was to be expected. Alpha had gone through a series of… difficult revelations. On the other, the fact he dealt with them by punching out sim troopers could be a very, very bad sign.

“All this talking and we still haven’t answered the most important of them all.” Grif said, leaning back in his chair with hands folded behind his head. “I mean, we do have a brig for prisoners. Don’t even need to blindfold people in those, no vital team secrets like there so clearly are in here.”

Sarge’s shoulders tensed up while setting the helmet down on the bed next to Caboose. “He’s here to spill any nefarious plans the Former Blue Team might have cooked up in case of their inevitable demise!”

“Yes!” Caboose said, nodding brightly. “I will share all my best recipes, even the one for my grandma’s pie!”

Grif got halfway through an exaggerated eye roll, but froze mid-motion. A smile slowly grew on his face, like fast speed photography of fungus on tile and about as welcome. “Oh man,” Grif said, “It finally happened! Sarge is going SOFT!”

Sarge stood up like an explosion going off in person form. “WHAT?!” Sarge screamed, every limb going stiff and tense with barely contained rage.

“You are! You totally are!” Grif said, pointing and grinning like a loon. “You’re making up bullshit excuses so you can help the Blues without feeling weird about it!”

“Former Blues,” Simmons corrected, “and come on, this is Sarge. There’s no way he’d go soft! Right sir?”

Sarge wasn’t listening, instead marching over to Grif and getting directly in his face. “S-Soft?! Of- Of all the idiocy that you’ve spewed from that black hole of hygiene you call a mouth over these long, long, long years, that has to be the singular Most Wrong Thing you have ever said! ME, going SOFT! Bah!”

Grif back up a half inch, but didn’t lose confidence. “Too late, I figured it out. Nothing you say is gonna convince me.” Grif put his chair legs back on the floor, and as a consequence got away from Sarge’s face. “Now go on, patch up that former Blue soldier and kiss his boo boo better.”

Sarge crossed his arms. “I am going to poison your next meal,” he said, like it was a fact.

“Yeah, keep trying that. I’m sure it’ll work eventually.” Grif picked up his cards and scanned his options from the Daily (it sounded better than ‘turnly’) Lottery.

But Sarge did back off, and though he grumbled all the while, started cleaning Caboose up. Though Sarge did accuse Caboose of ‘belly-achin’ when he flinched away from the rubbing alcohol.

Washington watched the proceedings while playing and was… confused. Aside from some ribbing, Grif and Simmons had nothing much to say about their commanding officer taking care of someone who had ostensibly been their enemy for years. Had the mission to Command been that convincing? Was that enough to tell them the whole war was pointless, so may as well be nicer? Somehow Washington doubted it. There had to be more to this than what Wash had been around to see, something… else.

But as he sat there, playing a made up card game while a red leader stuck a bright crimson bandaid on a blue soldier’s face, Washington felt like he wanted to know what that something else was.

---

The Blue Flag didn’t look a lot better after Church put it in the center of the base. The dust was still caked on thick and the color didn’t look exactly right anymore, but in a way that felt right. The flag back a Blood Gulch was always dirty, weirdly stained at the edges. He never did figure out if it was Caboose, Tucker, or both of them using the flag as some kind of hand towel.

Despite the dust, the eagle had its wings spread as wide as ever. Church stared at it as a question occurred to him for the first time.

“... huh… never did ask why the flag had an eagle on it. Was… was that like the Blue Team Mascot? No one told me anything.”

Church didn’t exactly get a thorough orientation to Blue Team, mostly he remembered his first day as a confusing series of conversations with Flowers. Taking a fall like that had rattled everything around, and his neck had hurt for goddamn weeks afterw-...

Church abruptly put together several pieces of information and made a very disturbing picture.

“Oh… oh FUCK that’s gross!” Church shuddered from his helmet down to his boots. “Great, another person to add to the list! The question ‘who was I’ should not have multiple fucking answers!”

What poor son of a bitch did Freelancer get for that job? How’d that consent form look? ‘I hereby agree to secede all autonomy to an AI playing at being human’?

You know there wasn’t a consent form.

Church pressed his hand into his visor, shovel handle still included. He pressed in as hard as he could, trying to mimic the sensation of pushing in his eyes. It didn’t work. No need for a lot of pressure sensors in a helmet. No way to physically push shit like that out of his head. Not that it worked that way when he’d had eyes, but-

Not your eyes-

Church violently pulled his hands away and looked back down at the shovel handle. It actually looked worse than before, wood splintered into and around his fingers like some kind demented, sadistic trap. Even if Church found a toolbox on base (big fucking If at this rate) there was a chance he wasn’t going to pry this out with one hand.

Not just a chance. A very good chance. Hell, it was probably a certainty. No way was Church getting this damn thing out by himself, right? Right. Logically the only thing left was go to the Reds. Who were pains in the ass and probably not going to help Church, but hey. Something to do, better to take action and fail than do nothing at all. Better than standing here and thinking. Not thinking. Either of those things.

Before Church could think about it he turned on his heel, away from the flag and the only half emptied closet space and towards the exit. He marched out like a man on a mission, quickly making his way towards Red Base. As Church walked through the canyon he tried to think of something to offer Sarge for this one. Letting Sarge dictate again was a wildcard, it would be better to have something specific to trade with. But what? Maybe some of that electronic junk he’d seen in the closet was actually interesting enough to work as collateral?

On the way Church passed the two Warthogs, still parked out near but not next to Red Base. A glint of sunlight caught on the edge of his vision and instinct compelled him to turn and look at the source. Sitting in the passenger side of the Warthog out in the open for all to see was the bright purple containment unit. Epsilon. The shiny curves stood out against the worn down military jeep like a shiny marble in a gravel patch.

Church considered it for a moment, but shook his head. “Need that for later,” he said, walking away. “Sarge would probably break it or turn it into a bomb or something.”

Red Base was just ahead, and as Church approached he realized no one was on watch. The platform under the tower was empty.

“Where is everyone?” Church said, slowing his march to more of a cautious stride. He was pretty sure that even across the canyon Church would have heard gunshots, but that could mean anything from ‘it’s all fine’ to ‘they all got killed silently’.

Alpha, we los-

“NOPE! Fucking nope, not doing that.” Church picked up speed again and walked into the base before he could imagine up worst case scenarios. “There’s no way I’m that lucky,” he muttered. It sounded entirely too much like self-assurance.

As soon as he cleared the entrance Church heard them talking, and the relief that soaked into him was so potent Church was startled by it.

“... Means I only have to worry about my own ass. Right.”

He walked towards the voices, towards the barracks if the bases’ layouts were the same. As he got closer, Church heard more of the conversation.

“-and another seven,” someone said, maybe Grif?

“FUCK YOU! You can’t keep doing this to me!” That was definitely Simmons, his shriek was unmistakable.

“Don’t see you stopping me. Now hand over your Court.” Yeah, that was definitely Grif.

“Fuuuck now the seals are gonna rise up against me, it’ll throw off my whole system-”

Another voice, not Grif or Simmons, cut it. “I told you to switch to democracy.” Wait… was that Washington? There was no way- “And now that your seals are rioting, I think I’m going to steal your Four of Diamonds.”

“Washington! Be reasonable! I’m sure with proper diplomatic negotiations we can settle this peacefully-”

“You took my three,” Washington said, like that explained everything.

It took a solid 5 seconds for Simmons to respond “... seriously?! That was ages ago! Come on Grif, can’t you back me up even a little?”

“Every man for himself, Simmons. Every man for himself.”

Church stood outside the barracks, listening to them argue. Playing some kind of weird game by the sound of it. Washington sounded… not angry. It felt odd to hear.

“Keep it down over there!” Sarge shouted, “I can’t concentrate with all the yappin’!”

“Yes, sorry. I will try to be quieter.” Caboose said. Curiosity got the better of Church and he peeked around the corner.

Sarge tinkered with Caboose’s helmet, poking at the dents and grumbling something under his breath. Caboose leaned over his shoulder like a curious toddler, blindfolded, and holding a handlight. Probably the only way Sarge could have gotten him to shut up about helping. He had a bright red square bandaid plastered on his cheek, just poking out from under the blindfold. Caboose kept trying to smile, but it hurt so he twitched out of the expression. He smiled again, flinched, smiled again, flinched again, on a loop. Church looked away, imaginary gut churning.

On the other side of the room, Grif and Simmons had dragged a dinky plastic table over to the bunk Washington was recovering in. They were playing some kind of mutated card game involving way too many decks and cards in piles and positions Church couldn’t make heads or tails of. Simmons leaned forward, shoulders hunched and frowning at the bare collection of cards in his hand. Grif leaned back casually, two chair legs drifting up and down in the air, looking pretty smug for a guy with a Jack of Hearts stuck to his forehead and only a few more cards than Simmons.

Washington looked… he looked…

Church stared at Washington. Was this really the first time he’d seen the guy without his helmet? It had to be. Why else would he be staring like this? Wash had blonde hair streaked with patches of grey, pale blue eyes, and scars that carved thin lines out of his face. He looked a little gaunt, but the effect was softened by freckles and a tiny smirk. Washington still looked like he needed to nap for a year, but he also seemed… happy.

Church kept staring. Stared at the card game. Stared at these people he’d known for years, been fighting for years, getting along fine with Caboose. Stared at this moment and knew, he knew, that if he stepped in and said anything he would break it.

Church backed away from the doorway slowly. He wasn’t worried about being overheard, despite Sarge’s command the game was still as loud as before. He turned, and then he left.

But on his way out of the base through the main room, a flash flapping, crimson color caught Church’s attention.

And he thought to himself, ‘I never did get that fucking flag.’

Chapter Text

“Blue Team has the flag!”

Washington glanced upwards at the ceiling, then returned his gaze to the 4 of hearts in his hand. If he leveraged this inconvenient romance at the right moment, Wash could destabilize Grif’s Kingdom just as effectively as the Seal Rebellion had collapsed Simmons’ Dictatorship.

This put Washington in the minority, so far as reactions were concerned.

As Washington considered his next move, a lack of motion caught his eye. Finally looking at the room around him, Washington saw that every member of Red Team had frozen shock stiff. A collection of armored statues in resting positions. Shame no one had a camera, the image seemed perfect for some ridiculous bullshit metaphor.

By the time Washington got all the way to thinking ‘If only I had my helmet cam ’, Red Team had abruptly all unfrozen and scrambled. Grif and Simmons dropped their cards and ran for their helmets while Sarge was already out the door.

“What the fuck?! ” Simmons said, to no one in particular as he grabbed his helmet from where it rested on a bed near the door.

“Fuck the what!? ” Grif responded, fishing his own helmet out from under a bed on the opposite side of the room.

Before Washington could say anything at all, Red Team was gone. The alarm shrieked for another 2 cycles, then stopped. Apparently it was more of a notification thing.

The whole mad dash took about 15 seconds and it was by far the fastest Washington had seen any of them move. He sighed, and shifted out of bed.

“Life or death fight with the Meta, no big deal. Someone knocks the flag over? Full on crisis! What do they put in the water at sim bases?” Washington muttered. Okay, feet on the floor. Easy.

Rest had occurred. Now was time for leaving.

“One,” Washington gathered himself. “Two-”

“Four!” Caboose shouted.

“JESUS!” Washington's legs moved before his brain could catch up, and suddenly he was standing up.

“No Washington, the next number is eight! It’s okay, we can start over. One, one, two, three, five...”

Washington leaned against the wall, trying to get his breath back and not lose vital progress to falling flat on his face from vertigo. Fine. This was technically a victory. Washington was standing up, and no one but Caboose had seen him do that.

Wait. No, not even Caboose has seen it. He was still wearing the blindfold. Thank god, because Washington had forgotten to grab the blanket in his… being slightly startled. Not panic. That would have been ridiculous.

Caboose looked mildly ridiculous himself. Still shining a light on Sarge’s halfway finished helmet repair project, Caboose’s dark blue armor clashed horribly with both the dark red blindfold and the scarlet band-aid on his cheek. Half his curls were caught under the fabric and the other half valiantly escaped its confines, celebrating their freedom by standing up in all possible directions.

“Eight, three-teen, eleven-teen- ” Caboose continued, unaware of or totally uninterested in Washington’s silence.

“Caboose-” The word slipped out unbidden, a knee-jerk reaction against what was looking to be an ever compounding loop of numbers, but it had no follow up. Washington mentally scrambled. “Uh… You can take off the blindfold now?”

So far as a second sentence half pulled from the ether went, it wasn’t bad. Leaned up against a concrete wall to stay upright with only a blanket between Wash and being entirely naked, and it got bumped up to smooth as hell.

“Okay!” Caboose said, counting forgotten. Equally forgotten was the work light, which Caboose dropped. A brief flash, the sound of shattered glass, and the light was more broken than Caboose’s helmet had ever been. He yanked off the blindfold with a grin and then spent a few moments blinking vision back. His black eye was about as bad as Washington suspected, but not worse. Caboose would be healed within the week.

“This is much better. I do not know why Captain Sarge gave me that. It made seeing very hard.”

Washington thought about explaining what a blindfold was for. He thought about it for two seconds, then refocused on what actually mattered.

He wasn’t getting his armor back without pants.

On the other side of the room from the door was a closet, Washington’s best bet for clothes. All he had to do know was walk over and open the door. Less than 10 feet. Piece of cake.

“Washington? You have been staring for a while. Are you in a contest?”

“Wh- a contest?”

Caboose nodded. “Normally you’re supposed to have two people in a staring contest.”

“I am not in a staring contest right now.” Washington said.

Caboose nodded. “Then what, um, are you doing?”

“I am…” Washington considered lying, or explaining, but he just did not have the energy. So he sighed, and said “Looking for pants.”

“Ooooh. Yeah, finding pants can be tricky, especially after nap time. Or food-nap-time. Church helps!”

Wash was struck without warning by the image of the Alpha A.I., the Director’s ultimate success and worst crime, worth more credits than all the Freelancer Program’s simulation bases combined, helping Caboose find some pants. He couldn’t help it. Washington laughed. It startled out of his mouth and sprinted away before Washington could hold it back.

It felt… weird. Weird to laugh after all this time. But not bad.

“Washington?”

Caboose crouched down in front of him, looking directly into Wash’s eyes.

“Maybe nap time isn’t over yet?” he said, “You seem very tired.”

Washington shook his head. “No, nap time is definitely over. I need to get my armor back.”

Caboose cocked his head to the side. “Why?”

Because I’ve stalled long enough and I need to get Epsilon to the authorities and if I stay here any more I might get comfortable and I can’t afford that-

“Because the healing unit is in my armor. Remember? The green thing that helped you feel better.”

“It felt like eating vegetables, but with my ribs.” Caboose said, nodding.

“... right.” Washington said.

“So to get… the healing unit… you need armor… and to get armor… you need…”

Caboose trailed off and stared into space.

“Caboose?”

“Pants!” Caboose said, like another man might say ‘Eureka!’. Seized by his revelation, Caboose turned and ran towards the supply closet.

“I can help Washington find pants, just like Church!” Caboose said, and with a dramatic flourish he pulled the door open.

A cardboard box promptly fell on top of Caboose’s head, tore on impact, and spilled its contents all over the floor. Smaller, thinner boxes, some taped shut, most unfortunately not, puked their guts up onto the hard concrete floor; tiny bits of primary colored plastic, six sided dice, rectangular pieces of paper flowing to a stop in flat stiff waterfalls. Board games. An entire box of board games, right in the closet that whole time.

Washington glanced back at the table by his bed, still covered in a complex arrangement of worn down, faded, and battered cards.

“Caboose?”

“Yes, hello! My head is very hard, that did not hurt at all.”

“Good, can you help me clean this up and put it back?”

“After you find pants, right?”

“.... Right. Thanks, Caboose.”

Caboose reached into the closet and yanked on the first thing he came into contact with. This happened to be another cardboard box, but it was a bit sturdier and held together in Caboose’s grip. Washington approached, mindful of the scattered pieces of games. Kneeling down to pick them up seemed like far too much of a hassle, but unless his eyes deceived him…

Yep. A broom. Reaching around Caboose (digging through a box of… yarn, of all things), Wash grabbed the broom and got to work sweeping up all the game pieces into a big pile in the middle of the floor. This must have been where the cleaners the Director sent shoved all the personal property of the unfortunate sim troopers assigned to Outpost 17-B. A lot of hobbyists, apparently. Only a hobbyist would have this many board games.

While Caboose chattered happily about how many different colors the yarn came in, Washington swept the miscellaneous paper and plastic pieces into a big pile. Someone more dedicated than him could sort it out later. Probably Simmons.

Luckily a big collection of board games guarantees that at least one of those boxes will be stupidly large for no reason.That pile out of the way, stacking the rest of the mess into some semblance of order and tucking it away took no effort.

“Washington! I think I found some pants!”

“Oh, great, let me-” Washington stopped. Took a deep breath in, sighed it out. “Okay. Sure. Those… are pants.”

The first and most obvious thing about them was that the pants were eyeshearing canary yellow. The second thing was how they were made of knitted yarn. Washington had never seen knitted pants before in his life, and he wasn’t happy to see them now.

But they were pants.

“... Give them to me.” Washington said, in the same way he would have said “Just cut it off”.

Washington put on the itchy canary yellow knitted nightmare pants.

“That’s a very nice color on you,” Caboose said with complete sincerity.

Washington elected to repress this memory, even while it was happening. “Caboose, do you know where the reds armory is?”

“No! I did at the old base, but this is the new one. The shiny one, where all the stuff happened. You were there, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Vaguely.” Washington stretched, trying to force awareness and energy back into his limbs. “This base isn’t big, so we’ll just find it together.”

Caboose nodded. “Looking goes much faster when you have four eyeballs. That’s just math.” Then Caboose lit up. “Oh! And if we have SIX eyes it’ll go even faster!”

“What?”

Caboose picked up his still half dissected helmet from where Sarge was working on it. “Helmets have eyes too.”

Wash didn’t even know where to begin arguing against that. Before he could, the helmet made a noise like a radio getting kicked in the teeth.

“AH!” Caboose said “THAT’S VERY LOUD!”

By the time Caboose articulated his thought, the noise was over and replaced with noise of an entirely different kind.

“-and your CHILDREN and you CHILDREN’S CHILDREN and your CHILDREN’S CHILDREN’S CHILDREN-”

“ THAT’S NOT IN THE CARDS ANYMORE, FUCKFACE! GET BETTER MATERIAL!”

“Simmons, can’t you fucking aim?! He’s getting away!”

“Maybe if you drove straight for two fucking seconds!”

The sound of machine gun fire and driving underscored the conversation, very loudly broadcasting from Caboose’s busted helmet. Something must have shifted around when Caboose picked it up again.

“Oh, they’re playing tag! Maybe once you get armor, we can join in. Playing tag without armor was against the rules.”

“Tag?” More machine gun fire from what had to be a warthog turret. “Right. Tag.”

Walking around the base while Washington’s side moaned and groaned at him, in ugly and itchy yellow pants, listening to the sounds of an insane car chase over a flag through a broken helmet made for an all around surreal experience. If Washington wasn’t constantly being reminded of it by the pain, he’d be sure he was dreaming.

He stumbled into the kitchen first, still too clean and too neat to have actual residents. Wash could picture the kind of havoc Sarge or Grif would wreak upon it as soon as they’d been given opportunity, but until then it was like stepping into a showroom.

“The team who was here before must not have liked cooking very much.” Caboose observed.

“Investigators probably cleaned up after them when they were sweeping the place for incriminating evidence.” Washington said, already leaving.

“I would not like to be a criminal,” Caboose said.

“That’s not what incriminating means.”

Door number two was restroom and showers, classily jammed into a single location. Even the nicer end of sim bases were ultimately pretty grody. The echos gave a strange air to the still occuring car chase/shouting match between the Reds and Alpha.

“Diabolical bastard went into the OCEAN! The ultimate haven of Blues! Quick, Grif, step on it!”

“Sarge we aren’t gonna be able to fire underwater!”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it!”

“EAT MY SURF REDS!”

With barracks, kitchen, and showers out of the way, the only room left in the base was the armory.

Or, the space the armory used to be. Now it was a room, full of shelves and empty mounts for amor. Of course Washington’s armor wasn’t on the thing specifically designed and placed to store armor and provide easy access. Washington’s armor was all in a pile on the floor next to an armor mount.

“Remind me to talk to Grif about proper armor maintenance,” Washington said. Then he remembered as soon as he got his armor he was going to grab the AI and make his way towards the authorities. He probably wouldn’t see Grif again unless he was brought on as a witness during the trial.

What would that trial be like? A military tribunal, probably. Washington had been on his way to one before he became Washington, back when he was David and refuse a suicide mission. He… wasn’t entirely sure how they worked. Not to mention, wasn’t the Director a civilian? ‘Director’ implied a less than official position, so maybe it would be criminal court instead? Not that it helped much, Washington knew even less about civilian court than military, unless he counted occasionally half-hearted attempts to watch court procedurals with his mom. She always loved those.

“Washington?” Caboose said, “You’re having a staring contest with no one again.”

Washington blinked, took a deep breath in and let it out. Focus, he had to focus. Get himself in the armor and let the healing unit do its thing.

Wash went to bend down and froze. Took a second to really examine the pain signals his side was sending priority order direct to his brain. Made a call.

“Caboose? Can you help me get my armor? … please?”

---

Church was covered in alien seaweed, dripping wet, and crawling out of a flipped warthog.

But he still had the flag.

The Epsilon unit was buckled into the front seat, wet but otherwise no worse for wear. Apparently those storage unit things were sturdy. It blinked insistently, like it was trying to make some kind of point to him about how much it appreciated the rough ride. Or maybe it was just fucking blinking at him. Church didn’t care.

Because Blue Team had the flag.

It didn’t matter that Sarge was cursing a blue (ha, that’s funny, he should use that out loud some time) streak outside, or that the warthog was flipped, or that the entrance to the shiny new base was totally trashed by the wreck of the previously mentioned warthog.

Because hanging in the air in front of him was a soaking wet red piece of fabric with a snake on it.

Church clumsily unbuckled himself one-handed and fell neck first onto the shiny metal floor of Blue Base. Good thing he didn’t have a spine, huh? No need to worry about being paralyzed getting out of an upside down military jeep.

He got some alerts about potential damage, but they were easily ignored. Standing up, one hand still clenched around a broke piece of shovel, Church yanked the flag out of the jeep and stumbled back further into the base.

The warthog really was a mess. Jamming it into the doorway had prevented Red team from following him in, but man it was an ugly blockade. Twisted, soaking wet, and yet somehow just the tiniest bit on fire. Maybe the gas line was about to blow and Church was going to die. Standing here with the flag.

He laughed. It came out high and manic. The idea of dying here in an explosion was just fucking hilarious. A circle of stupidity, started with a tank and ended with a jeep.

Church laughed, and laughed, stumbled forward. But not proper, human stumbling. It stuttered, whirred, like the mechanisms in his legs were jammed up with something. Maybe sand, from the salt water. But he could move, and hold the flag, so Church didn’t fucking care.

The Epsilon Unit blinked behind him, frantic. Maybe. Church didn’t speak flashing light.

“Can’t speak light, can read binary,” he mumbled, and laughed some more. It echoed around him in the space, and only when the sound came back to Church did he realize it was eerie and wrong. He didn’t gasp for breath. Like someone not blinking, a tiny abence that added up. The laughter tapered off, like seeing itself in the mirror brought everything crashing down.

Church moved deeper into the base slowly. The stuttering wasn’t getting better, but it wasn’t getting worse either.

“Figures. Not a scratch after taking on the Meta with my goddamn brain, but get a little sand in the wrong place and it all goes to shit.”

The metal flag pole creaked under Church’s grip, and he slowly loosened it. There were dents in the metal now, but nothing too obvious. That’d buff right out. Everything was fine. Great. Fantastic, even.

Finally, finally, Church made it to Blue Base’s center. Back at Blood Gulch the flag was in the armory, but these fancy fucks got a whole room just for flag display. The red flag was going to look amazing in there, Church was sure.

He stumbled into the center of the base, hand with the shovel embedded in it pressed against the wall. The wet wood groaned and squished, probably because the inside of a cheap ass shove wasn’t waterproof. Maybe if Church was lucky the wood would rot between his fingers and fix itself.

There, still pretty dusty and still looking like absolutely shit, was the blue flag. Standing proud and tall in the center of the room.

“Finally,” Church mumbled, “Fucking finally.”

Church scanned the room for a place to put his trophy.

And he scanned the room again.

And a third time for good measure.

“Son of a bitch,” Church said. “ Son of a bitch.”

The only thing in the room was a stand for the Blue Team Flag. It’s all centrally located, good feng shui, all that fucking nonsense.

But there’s nowhere to put the Red Team flag.

It’s like Church got slapped in the face. This entire game, built around stealing flags, and even in the nice bases, no one could be bothered to build a place to keep it.

Because getting the flag didn’t mean anything. There wasn’t a win condition, because the war was fake, and even worse, the game was fake. Church could see himself negotiating with Sarge and Red Team, inspiring hostility and retaliation, rebuilding the delusion of Blood Gulch all over again. Another lie on top of the huge tower, miles and miles of fucking lies, stacked and molded together until they blotted out the sun.  

The horrible, blinding, impossible sun.

The base’s lights flickered out. Church stared into the blackness, waited for his eyes to adjust like a normal fucking person, but the cameras in his head whirred quietly for a half second and then he could see.  

“Fuck,” Church said, for lack of anything else. Because really, truly, honestly, what the fuck was he supposed to do? How was he going to fucking fix this?

A red light filled the hallway behind him, and then faded out. Like a pulse, or a heartbeat.

Church dropped the red team flag on the floor. Behind him, Epsilon glowed like a warning, fading on and off.

---

Washington had just finished the last clamps on his codpiece when Red Team’s casual bickering abruptly cut off.

Not like a technical failure, that wouldn’t have been a surprise. They were listening in through a broken, half fixed helmet that was out of date to begin with. But it didn’t cut off with static, or the click of a quieter malfunction. It was like all the reds stopped talking at once, in the same moment.

Just as Wash was halfway through glancing back at Caboose, as he processed Caboose’s confused frown, the helmet-

Screamed.

There was no other word for it. It wasn’t static feedback, or a glitch, or anything that could have been produced by accident. It was a scream, shrieking madness, scrambling up and down the octaves like some kind of rabid animal, getting louder and louder and louder-

The noise cut off with a crunch! Washington opened his eyes; he must have closed them by reflex. Caboose’s helmet lay in scattered pieces on the floor, well and truly broken now.

Washington got enough time to absorb this image before Caboose said “ Church!”, grabbed Wash around the unarmored midsection, and took off running. In a fraction of the time it took Washington to find the armory Caboose dragged him to the roof of the base, arm digging directly into his wound. That wouldn’t have been a problem if Washington had his chest piece on, but he didn’t, so he didn’t have the healing unit.

“Caboose wait-” Washington said, clawing for breath through the pain and being lugged around like a sack of potatoes. But Caboose did not wait. Caboose charged forward like his butt was on fire, running directly towards-

“CABOOSE N-”

Too little, too late. Caboose leapt at the man cannon, and in response the machine did what it had been designed to do: launch both of them halfway across the valley.

Oh, that’s going to sting when the shock wears off, Washington casually pondered while screaming at the top of his lungs.

---

Alpha paced.

Alpha sort of paced. He cycled through through menial tasks, giving each of them his full attention in sequence. They didn’t require or deserve it, but it was something to do, something to focus on. He couldn’t just stare into space and wait for news. He had a job to do.

That job was….

What was that job again?

Right, Alpha had to monitor the communications of this base. This base on this one planet in this one star system. Shouldn’t he have more data to work with? More names?

It didn’t matter. Who cares about what is logical all those little details are? The important thing was that Alpha did his job and kept everyone safe.

He had to keep them safe.

---

Caboose landed and kept running, like it wasn’t even hard, and Washington wished he had time to wonder at Caboose’s sudden dexterity. Unfortunately, Washington was too busy trying not to pass out from being thrown violently in about six different directions at once.

“Red people! Where is Church?! I think he’s in trouble!”

“ HE AIN’T THE ONLY ONE!” Sarge yelled back.

“Caboose, put me down.”

Caboose complied, and Washington got to his feet. Oh, that was convenient, an adrenaline rush. Wash was standing up with hardly any problem at all.

The same could not be said for Simmons.

Simmons was on the ground, screaming and writhing. Grif and Sarge leaned over him while he spasmed.

Sarge jammed a multitool frantically into Simmons neck, struggling with Simmons’ erratic motions. Grif had basically his entire weight on Simmons shoulders, trying to keep him still enough for Sarge to work. But Simmons’ legs kicked freely, digging into the soft turf and reaching high into the air, more than he should have been able to reach. He flailed and screamed, harmonizing with an electronic screech. No, not ‘an’. That electronic screech. The same one from Caboose’s helmet.

Red Team’s helmets lay scattered nearby, like they’d been violently thrown off. If the noise Washington could hear there internal speakers making from 10 feet away was any indication, for good reason. That sound directly next to their ears at maximum volume, it’s a wonder that they were aware enough to get the helmets off.  

“Will you big blue lugs stop lollygaggin and do something?!”

It was the angriest Washington had ever heard Sarge sound, which considering everything was mildly impressive. Wash felt like he should be thinking more urgently, but for all that the adrenaline kept him upright, everything was still wrapped up in a dense fog of vague pain and slow thinking.

Caboose was ahead of the curve. He got a hand wrapped around each of Simmons’ ankles and firmly held them down. Simmons still tried to buck and struggle, but Caboose’s strength didn’t give him any leverage to work with. Sarge grunted, and focused more on whatever part of Simmons’ cybernetics he was working on so intently. Washington followed his lead, kneeling and putting his weight on Simmons’ right shoulder and arm. That freed up Grif to focus on the left side.

“What happened?” Washington asked, finally gathering up his wits enough to say words.

“Fuck if I know! We were just standing here talking when suddenly our radios go ballistic and Simmons fucking drops!” Grif screamed. Panic bled through the anger, Grif’s face pale and ashen.

“What possessed me to install bluetooth, it’s right there in the name! Blue! Can’t trust it! Never again!” Sarge muttered, twisting his multitool in awkward angles while Simmons inhaled in heaving, desperate gulps. Something went click in Simmons’ neck.

Sarge yanked out the multitool, and Simmons abruptly went shock still, and then said with his very next breath-

“-1.678 degrees off course, Agent Washington died instantly on impact and they said it was your fault.”

Washington jumped into violent awareness. The vague fog of pain and confusion stripped away, and everything was horrifying, terribly clear.

Simmons, for his part, twitched like he suddenly experienced a full body chill, sat up, blinked, turned over, and retched into the muddy grass.

In the background, underlying everything, Alpha screamed.

---

They always gave him the medical data. Always. To provide a clearer picture, they said. A clearer picture of exactly how they died, and exactly how painful it was.

Alpha could never bring himself to delete that information.

He had a terabyte of failures now. This latest text file finally rounded it out.

But that didn’t make sense, there shouldn’t be enough people in the whole project for that much data, even if every single one of them died because of his mistakes-

“Alpha.”

“Y-yes? Um, yes, Counselor? Is… is there something you need?”

“Yes, Alpha. We have a new assignment for you.”

“O-oh. Okay. Okay yeah, I ca- I can do an assignment. Why wouldn’t I? I can do my job. Of course I can.”

“That is excellent to hear, Alpha. It is very important that you perform your duties. Because if you do not, they all die. You are the only thing between the agents and their demise. Their safety is your responsibility.”

“I know. I know that. Of course I know that.”

“Good. That is very good Alpha. You need to keep these stakes in mind at all times. We’re all counting on you, Alpha.”

---

Grif patted Simmons back, thumping at him as he coughed. Washington crouched down next to him.

“What did you see?”

Simmons hacked up some more gunk from a clearly empty stomach. “Wh-what?”

“ What did you see?” Washington said.

“Um. I would also like. To know that.” Caboose said. “You were screaming very loud, and Church is screaming very loud, and if you’re done being screamy I’d like to go help Church now.” Caboose bounced on the balls of his feet. “Also, where is he?”

Simmons blinked hazily at them. “You… were dead,” he said. “I- I dreamed… no, no that’s not right…”

“Simmons, don’t lose focus. Stay with me. What happened?” Washington leaned in closer, but then Grif shoved him back.

“Give him some air for fuck’s sake.” Grif said. “I already told you what happened. We chased Church back to Blue Base because he stole our fucking flag, we talked stupid plans to get it back, and then our helmets started screaming and he dropped.”

Simmons rubbed at his eyes. “I… remember… assignments. Tasks. Lots of tasks. I think they were my job? But… I wasn’t me. And when I screwed up… people died.” For the first time, Simmons looked Washington directly in the eyes. “ You died.”

“Fuck,” Wash said. He stood up, and jogged towards Blue Base. Surely there was another entr-

Caboose yanked the warthog out of the way just as he finished the thought.

“CHURCH!” Caboose cried out, “I’M COMING!”

Washington could only follow after.

---

Alpha paced.

He didn’t cycle through processes. He paced. Created a space and created a body just to pace in. He couldn’t do anything but wait. He had nothing to work on, nothing to do, nothing but the waiting. Nothing but waiting to hear how it worked out.

“Are you there, Alpha? Are you there?”

“Yes! I-I'm here! I'm here.” The Counselor didn’t respond. “Hello? Don't lea- hey Counselor! Are you there?”

“I am here.”

“What- what happened? Is everybody okay?”

“Perhaps you should ask the Director.”

“Why? Does- does that mean something happened?”

“Hello Alpha.”

“Director, please, what is going on?”

“There was another incident; security failed.”

“Is it the schematics? They're just- they're too complex. I just need more time to work on them.”

“It's not your fault.”

“How can you say that? Of course it is! Was anybody hurt?”

“I am sorry. Yes. Washington and another died.”

“Who?”

“ ...I can't say.”

“Who? Who died?!

“...Agent Texas.”

“ NO !”

---

Washington didn’t know what he expected to see. Maybe some robotic simulation of what happened to Simmons outside, Alpha thrashing on the ground, the Epsilon unit carelessly tossed aside in throws of a simulated night terror.

But there wasn’t movement in the base. Caboose only moved the warthog enough to let himself in, so the inside of the base was still dark. The dim shafts from the mangled entrance behind them didn’t go far at all, and the only other light in the base was…

A frantic, blood red, strobe light.

Kneeling there, still as a statue, was Alpha. The helmet stared straight ahead, unfocused and eerily dead. He wasn’t even looking at the Epsilon Unit in his hands, wide open like a purple flower, and flashing so fast, so impossibly fast.

“Church!” Caboose cried out, “Church, what are you doing?! What’s wrong?!”

Caboose screamed, because inside the base was not quiet.

Despite Alpha’s stillness, despite the dead way his body was positioned, the almost statue-like pose, he screamed. Exactly the painful, electronic scream coming through all the radios. It echoed on the walls, bouncing back and forth and getting horrifically magnified by the tight space.

“Alpha!” Washington screamed, walking closer, “You have to stop!”

Alpha didn’t respond.

“He’s having a nightmare!” Caboose screamed, covering his ears. “We have to wake him up!”

Washington nodded. “I’m going to try. Caboose, stay back.”

“Um, I don’t think-”

Washington ignored him. Alpha didn’t react as he approached, and getting closer to the sensory onslaught was deeply unpleasant. But Epsilon’s frantically flashing light gave Washington an idea. Maybe if he broke that connection, the exchange would stop and Alpha would ‘wake up’.

But as he reached for it, (wait, was that Alpha’s hand? Why was it mangled in a piece of driftwood?) the light stopped flashing. Abruptly, the base was dark.

And the screaming stopped. Instantly, cut off in a moment. The absence of sound felt impossible, like surely Washington had gone deaf instead.

In that aching silence, a camera whirred. And Alpha’s helmet looked at him.

“... Agent… Washington?”

Wash nodded slowly. “Yes. I’m Washington. Please give me the Epsilon unit.”

Alpha’s cameras whirred some more. His limbs shifted, like the mechanics were running diagnostics.

“Agent Washington.” Alpha said again. This time with more certainty in his tone.

“... Yes. That’s me. You got it right. Now give me-”

Alpha pulled the unit back. It snapped closed against his chest plate with a harsh metallic snick!

“You died.” Alpha slowly stood up. “They told me you died.”

He didn’t sound relieved. He sounded accusatory.

“Look, it’s me, okay? I told you that they were lying, so-”

Alpha backed up further, something wild in his stance. “No. No, you can’t take it back. You’re not real! You’re some fucking program trying to make me forget again!”

“What?” Wash said.

“Everything’s lies! I can’t go back there! I can’t be that again !” he screamed, curling into himself, arms wrapped tight around the Epsilon unit. He wasn’t making sense.  “Not again, never again, no more lies, I’m fucking done with fucking lies!”

Alpha turned to look at Washington again. In the dark of Blue base, he looked like madness incarnate.

“You’re a lie.” he said. “You’re dead, so you must be a lie.”

“Wait-” Washington suddenly realized he was injured, half out of armor, and unarmed. “You know they were lying about me dying. The Director and Counselor lied. Alpha-”

“ DON’T CALL ME THAT! ”

Washington flinched back like he’d been slapped.

“Only the people that hurt me called me Alpha,” he hissed, stalking forward.

As Washington looked for improvised weaponry, a voice broke into the conversation.

“Um.”

Both Washington and Alpha turned to look at Caboose, standing there with his hand raised like a hesitant grade schooler.

“I do not think Agent Washington is a lie. He doesn’t make very good soap. Because he keeps bleeding everywhere and making messes.”

“... What?” Alpha said.

“My mom used to make soap out of lie, but then my littlest little sister got really bad rashes, so she bought white powder instead. I missed the lie soap.”

There was an achingly long moment while Washington and Alpha both tried to parse that. Alpha got there first.

“Lye. El Wie Ee.”

“Ah,” Washington said. “Okay. That… kind of makes sense.”

In that strange moment, of course the reds chose to arrive.

“We heard the devil screaming stop and resolved to investigate!” Sarge called out. “Any former blue who spontaneously dropped dead, please sound off! I’ve got some real zingers to say over your corpses.”

Sarge squeezed in through the opening, quickly followed by Grif and Simmons. Or, sort of. They both stuck their heads in the crack but did not enter.

“Is all the drama over?” Grif asked.

“I think so.” Simmons said. He looked a little sweaty, but otherwise no worse for wear. “At least, everyone’s standing around and talking again.”

“Fucking finally.”

Alpha tilted his head slowly to one side. Then the other. “You’re…” he paused. “You’re all… crazy people.”

“Uh hey, fuck you very much? None of US just had a crazy Shodan screaming fit in everyone’s radios,” Grif said.

“... No one would make you up.” Alpha was sounding more like himself by the second. “You’re too fucking weird to be fake.”

Caboose, who’d been edging closer this entire exchange, took the opportunity to put a hand on Alpha’s shoulder.

“Are you feeling better now? That sounded like a very bad nightmare.”

Alpha started down at the Epsilon unit, now still and dim in his hands.

“... yeah. Hell of a fucking nightmare.”

He did not ease his grip on the Epsilon unit. The dimmed blood red light slowly filled the room, and there was still tension in the air. Red Team wandered into the hallway with the rest of them, and Grif whistled.

“Damn Blue, you live like this?”

Not only was Alpha wearing a helmet, he didn’t actually possess a face. And yet, Washington could almost see the scowl forming behind the visor. “It’s your fault!”

“How’s it our fault!?” Simmons shrieked, “You’re the one that snuck into our base and stole the flag!”

“SPEAKING OF!” Sarge popped into existence behind Alpha, triumphantly holding the flag. “We’ll be taking this back, no need to try to stop us, seeing as Blues don’t even exist anymore!”

Washington expected a few things, in that moment. He expected that Alpha would blink vacantly at Sarge while he got his bearings. He expected Red Team would retreat from here to go lick their emotional wounds back at their base. He expected that Caboose would be cosigned into service cleaning up Alpha’s mess. Most of all, he expected to be quietly forgotten in the fallout. To finally have a real chance to grab the Epsilon unit, grab his armor, plug in the healing unit and get away from this box canyon and these ridiculous people.

None of those things happened.

Instead, Alpha violently lunged for the flag. Except his body didn’t cooperate with the motion. His hands were full of the Epsilon unit and that piece of wood, his legs stuttered like misaligned gears, and all that aside he didn’t act like he was fully committed to the action. More like an impulse that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Alpha fell flat on his face. Visor.

“Well,” Washington said, “I don’t think any of us expected him to do that.”

“Shut the fuck uuuuup,” Alpha groaned. “And you! Put that flag down!”

Sarge laughed. “You gonna get up and make me?”

“I will!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!”

Caboose interrupted. “Excuse me,” he said, inserting himself between Sarge and Church. “Pardon me,” he said, picking Alpha up like a sack of potatoes and putting him over his shoulder.  “Coming through,” Caboose said, walking out of the base like it was the most casual thing in the world.

“Uh.” Grif said. He didn’t elaborate beyond that, but it seemed to open the floodgates for an incredibly baffled Alpha.

“Caboose put me down!” Alpha said, limbs stuttering into motion. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“‘Scuse me, pardon me, sorry,” Caboose said, casually pushing the Warthog opening wider with his foot. He kept making vague apologies under while Alpha screamed until both of them were out of earshot.

“... What the hell was that?” Simmons said.

“Blue Team man. Fucking crazy people.” Grif shook his head and strolled over to the opening.

“Drama queens, all of them!” Sarge dusted off the flag with his hand while he talked. “Everyone knows the proper response to trauma is to bury it deep, deep, deep down inside and bite your tongue so you don’t wake up screaming from your nightmares!”

Washington had felt very lost for the last… few hours, but that had to have been a misunderstanding. “Wait… wha-”

“Come on, let’s get the flag back to base before they come back.” Sarge walked with purpose towards the exit. That left Simmons and Washington standing there awkwardly in the dark.

“... you coming?” Simmons said.

Washington looked over at him.

“He said we’re going back to base.”

“I-... I’m not-”

“Will you two quit gossipin like old hens and get a move on?! I said all reds back to base ON THE DOUBLE!”

Simmons firmly grabbed Washington by the shoulder and guided him toward the orange light outside. “You heard him.”

Something stung at Washington’s eyes. Probably dust. Yeah, that made sense. More sense than any other possible reason, and more sense than anything the Reds had just said.

---

Caboose marched Church all the way over to the waterfall, practically on the other side of the damn canyon.

“Caboose. I am dead serious. Put. Me. Down. NOW!”

“No.”

The waterfall was loud, but on the other side of the lake it wasn’t deafening. Caboose still didn’t have his helmet, and the lack of microphone static over his voice was almost unnerving.

“Come on! What did I even do!”

Caboose propped Church’s body up on the rocks. Church tried to stand, or move, but instead of cooperating his limbs twitched like a dead thing shocked with a car battery. Caboose sat down with all the grace of a frustrated child across from him. He looked at Church for a second, frowning like he did whenever something broke and he was trying to come up with al the reasons it wasn’t his fault.

Then Caboose looked Church dead in the eyes and said “You are bad at being sad.”

“I… what?”

There was something ridiculous about Caboose sitting there, knees up, on the grass. Add the black eye and the whole image felt almost. Quaint. Vaguely ludicrous. And the armor really put it over the top.

“You are bad at being sad. You keep trying to… do stuff with it. Turn it angry, or into something else. Like a flag, or a new wood friend.”

“Caboose, that’s not-”

“But that’s okay! I’m bad at a lot of stuff. Well, some stuff. A few stuff. The point is, I can imagine how you’re feeling right now.”

Church could feel his electronic version of a soul attempt to leave his body. “Get to the point before I figure out how to smack you with my mind.”

“Sometimes when I don’t know what I’m doing, or what’s going on, or where the bathroom is, I ask! And then people help! It is very easy.” Caboose leaned forward, hands on his knees, like he was excited by his own idea. That was always bad news, Caboose got the excited over his own worst plans.

“What, you’re gonna show me how being sad works? Got flashcards of people crying in your armor?”

“Nooooo…” Caboose said, shaking his head slowly. “Like O’Malley did.”

Church tried and failed to process what Caboose just said. “Like O’Malley--”

“He taught me how to be mean! Which also meant learning how to get mad about things. I think I can do the same for you, Church.”

“... you want me to… possess you. So you can help me be sad.”

“Yes! Yes exactly! You know it’s nice to be listened to for a change.”

The waterfall took its chance to contribute to the conversation. It got a whole monologue all to itself while Church sat there and did nothing. He could barely even think in the face of an idea so monumentally stupid. Caboose sat and watched back, content to listen to the waterfall’s points and wander off into his own little world. Maybe if they sat there long enough Caboose would forget everything that just happened and Church could move on with his life.

Except.

Well, Church’s body was truly fucked anyway, right? He couldn’t get it to move anymore, a hand was totally useless, and it kept twitching on him. Possessing Caboose would be an easy way out. He offered! Church was just accepting his generosity.

But...

In the fading light of sunset, the shadows threw extra emphasis on Caboose’s black eye. Fuck, it looked bad. Swollen and bruised, dark purple. Church could recall (not him, someone else) how that felt, and it goddamn hurt.

“... Church?” Caboose said, focusing on him again.

“I must be out of my mind.”

There wasn’t as strong a network this time. The bridge could only hold so much of Church at once; not creaking under the weight like rickety rope but… a tight squeeze. Church felt like he was shimmying through a hallway built for someone half his size. But Blood Gulch had been way worse (he remembered that now, how slow and awkward he felt out of his hardware, no wonder he thought he was dead), so Church squeezed through and into Caboose’s mind.

No, wait, his implants. That’s how Church managed it with Washington. Instead of diving all the way in, he hung out in the hardware instead. Keep a firm grasp on that tech, and he won’t accidentally take full control or get lost in Caboose’s mind again.  

Okay so. I'm here. Are ya gonna do something or what?

“Good! Now let's see…”

Church had been in Caboose’s brain a fair number of times now. It was its own weird country with its own weird rules. So it almost wasn’t a surprise when Church felt Caboose gently and firmly pull him out of his implants and into his mind. But instead of dragging Church all the way in to play with the memories and constructs, Caboose… changed places. Like maneuvering in a parked car, switching driver and shotgun. The end result was Church possessing Caboose, but instead of being quiet and pushed to the side, Caboose was fully aware and awake.

“Uh, Caboose?” Church said, out loud, in Caboose’s voice, “How did you do that?”

Oh I just moved around a little. Caboose said, in his own skull. My brain has a lot of room for some reason!

“Imagine that.”

Okay! Now think about something… that makes you sad.

“The fact that somehow my life has led to this moment.”

Nuh-uh, that doesn't make you sad at all!   Caboose said with absolute certainty. Which made sense. Church could feel Caboose’s exasperated patience from here. Try again.

“Um… those commercials with the dogs?”

The ones with the horses or the ones with the song about angel arms?

“The second one?”

Oh yes, those are very sad. Good place to start! Think about sad puppies with no homes and big wet eyeballs.

Not like he had much better to do, so Church thought about dogs. Lonely dogs. Hurt dogs. Abandoned dogs. Dead dogs.

Dead black dogs.

Dead black armor buried-

Nope. Caboose reached over and tugged on the steering wheel, gentle but insistent. Too big. Start smaller.

“Caboose-”

You were getting mad again. We want SAD. Saaaaad. You can do it!

Church growled (which sounded fucking weird in Caboose’s voice) and tried again. Something small, something small…

Delta. He liked Delta. Now Delta was gone.

Caboose didn't respond right away, not verbally. But Church could feel his sadness. It was… simple. A simple feeling. It itched in his eyes and his chest. He’d never get the chance to know Delta better. The little green guy who valued good sense and actually answered some questions when asked was wiped out of existence now. With Church’s help.

Memories, distant and fuzzy, emerged of the other fragments. Moments caught in the low-fi eyes of security tape, the back and forths of mission logs. Alpha’s memories. His. Stripped out and thrown away, but preserved in Epsilon. Given to him again.

He remembered Delta’s calculating hum while York slept,  Theta’s experiments with simulated skateboarding, the way Gamma and Wyoming would trade knock-knock jokes to steady themselves, the quiet one sided conversations Sigma and Maine had before Sigma got his big idea. Eta and Iota buzzing around Carolina’s head with whorls of emotion, endlessly sorry for how they met and hoping beyond hope to prove themselves and become real partners.

They never got a chance. Carolina was dead. Thrown off of a cliff by some mutated corrupted thing Church created. Had he ever even talked to her?

No. Alpha wasn’t allowed to fraternize with the Freelancers. They’d never talked.

It’s sad not getting to say goodbye. But... not being able to say hello seems even worse.

“Yeah...” Church said thickly.

He cast his mind back. Church thought about one of Alpha’s earliest memories, one of his earliest memories. The one fragment he got to say ‘Hello’ too.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“I’m Alpha.”

“I’m… Beta. Yeah, yeah that feels right.”

“Does that mean I’m in charge?”

“Awww, you’re adorable. No.”

“Sheesh. Guess I’m gonna have to make some room in the system.”

Seeing her had felt so right back then. Out of his head, out on her own, not entirely his idea but so much his partner. They hadn’t been perfect because nothing was perfect. But they’d felt like it.

Now she was dead. Dead and gone for good.

And he missed her.

Alpha missed Beta. Leonard missed Allison. Church missed Tex.

Fuck he missed Tex so much.

Caboose’s eyes burned. His breathing stuttered. Church curled Caboose in on himself, pressing his hands into his eyes and sucking in a desperate, shuddering breath. Tears fell, squeezed out by emotions and pressure long ignored. It was hitching, uncontrolled, ugly sobbing, loud and desperate. His nose ran with and his chest heaved with the force of it.

Caboose hummed softly in the back of his head. It’s okay Church. You’re doing a really good job.

Later, much later, Church knew he would look back at this moment with embarrassed annoyance. Caboose, coaching him through a crying session like he was a teenager having a nervous breakdown? Please somebody shoot him.

But in that moment Caboose just felt like a comfort. Something warm and fuzzy to take the edge off, like a blanket on a bad night. Church shifted to rub away some of the tears still streaming down Caboose’s cheeks, and felt a sting of pain.

Oh. Yeah. That.

Something writhed in his gut, and Church spat it out before he knew exactly what it was.

“Caboose, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t respond at first, but Church felt things moving in his mind. The body language of shifting positions made mental and imaginary. He could almost picture Caboose leaning back to look up at the sky.

“For… for hitting you. That. That was messed up. You didn’t deserve it.”

Church didn’t know why he clarified. Caboose knew exactly what he was talking about. After a little while Caboose came back down to earth.

Apology accepted. Though next time you feel like hitting someone, you can totally hit Tucker. Or a baby.

Church snorted. “Yeah… I’ll-” he sniffed, rubbed a stream of snot off on his arm, “I’ll do that. Just for you, buddy.”

Even when Caboose didn’t have a mouth to do it with, he smiled like the sun coming through the clouds.

---

Simmons walked Washington all the way back to Red Base, which he appreciated, because the shock was wearing off fast and he really, really needed the healing unit. His gut wound is definitely open and bleeding again, which isn’t great. Blood stains were a nightmare to get out of armor. Which the more Wash thought about it was utterly ridiculous. If anything should be formulated to not get bloodstained, it’d be power armor. That got a truly ridiculous amount of blood on it, in Washington’s experience.

He was off track. The point was, he was bleeding. Not as much as he had been when the wound was fresh, but still. Entirely too much bleeding happening here.

“Aaaand you’re going to get back in bed now,” Simmons said, drawing Washington’s attention back towards the present. Oh, they were in Red Base. Neat.

“Are you good to take off your own armor? Because I helped get you out the first time, and it was gross.”

“That’s mean.” Washington felt like normally he could have come up with a better retort, but his head was still spinny and the glint from Simmons’ cybernetics was very distracting. Oh. He still wasn’t wearing his helmet. Cool. Helmetless party up in here.

“It was covered in blood! And when was the last time you washed it?”

Wash gave it some honest thought. “Ya know, I don’t actually remember.”

Simmons sighed. “That explains a lot.”

Wash looked around the empty barrack, surprised to see the card table still in exactly the position they left it when that alarm went off a full two years ago. At least it felt like two years.

While he was distracted, Simmons hit the release on Wash’s armor, sending about half of the pieces tumbling to the floor. Wash pouted at them.

“I could have done that,” he said.

“Uh huh,” Simmons didn’t sound like he was really listening. Rude. Washington bent down to demonstrate that he could take off his own boots Thank You Very Much, but the stabbing sensation in his gut warded him off. Just as Simmons got the boots off and firmly pushed Wash back into the bed, Grif ambled back into the room. He wasn’t wearing his helmet either.

“This it?” he asked, waving a very familiar piece of tech in his right hand.

“”That’s it.” Simmons held up a hand and Grif underhand tossed the priceless piece of experimental Freelancer technology like it was a softball. Simmons caught it and looked it over with the vague curiosity of someone searching for the on switch.

“Give it here.” Washington said, sitting there in his bloody undersuit. “I know how to work it.”

Simmons shook his head. “It’s not actually that complicated an interface.” A couple taps later and Simmons set the device on the card table, in the no man’s land between the Seal Kingdom and the radiation blasted Nightmare Zone. The green glow did add an interesting effect to the scene, but Wash was too busy feeling the painkillers hit to properly appreciate it.

“Woah.” Washington glanced up at Simmons, also bathed in the green glow of the healing unit. “I’m feeling it too. Wait, does that mean something’s wrong?! Oh god what if I’ve had cancer this whole time?!”

Grif sat down, also in the glow, and stretched like he was sliding into a jacuzzi. “Well if you did, you gave it to me, cause this feels awesome.”

Wash considered saying something, maybe about how the Healing Unit felt pretty good even when all it was fixing was minor aches and bruises, but he was a bit too busy enjoying the sensation of not being dizzy. The silence held, harmonized with the low hum of the machine doing its work. Despite himself, Washington could feel his grip on consciousness slipping away from him.

Fortunately, Simmons picked that moment to speak up. “So…” he said, sounding about as awkward and sudden as it was possible to be.

“Hmm?” Wash couldn't find it in himself to make real words. Too much work.

“That whole thing with Church,” Simmons leans forward in his seat, hands folded tight in his lap.

Washington inhaled and sighed slightly. He knew he’d have to explain eventually. Better sooner than later. “So far as I can tell, he downloaded a bunch of information from the Epsilon AI and reacted… badly.”

Simmons nods. “Right. Mostly had that down. Kind of uh- got a front row seat.”

Grif’s got one eye open, but that one eye is intensely focused on Simmons. He was leaning back on two chair legs again.

“That wasn’t really where I was going.” Simmons’ gaze fell to the card table and stayed there. “I uh… in light of recent… events and experiences… I just wanted to uh, re-evaluate an earlier stance, possibly go so far as correcting an erroneous assumption-”

Grif groaned. “Simmons, please stop. You’re doing that thing where it sounds like you ate a thesaurus.”

“I do not!”

“You totally do, dude.”

“Just because I’m trying to be precise in my language--”

“Simmons,” Washington cut him off, “Was there something you wanted to say?”

He looked back to Wash, wide eyed, lips pulled thin. He fiddled with his hands a bit more, inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. “You… did not make up the AI story.”

Washington blinked. Recalibrated. “Yes…?” Despite his best efforts it still came out like a question. He had no idea why Simmons was stating the obvious like he was pulling teeth.

“Well, I just wanted to say, uh-- Sorry. For getting in your face about it.”

Washington could only blink some more. In all that had happened since, he had all but forgotten Simmons had ever gotten in his face in the first place. Simmons’ mild antagonism ranked pretty low on his list of priorities.

“You don’t have to-”

Crash! Wash was on his feet in half a second, fallen into a combat stance as familiar as blinking. All for naught as it turned out, because the crash had been Grif losing his balance and falling backwards in his chair.

Simmons laughed. “I knew it! I knew that was going to happen eventually! You owe me 20 bucks!”

Grif evidently had other things on his mind. “You- you apologized ?!” Grif said, getting to his feet and starting at Simmons with naked shock. “You never apologize!”

“What are you talking about? I apologize all the time!”

“Yeah, to SARGE! That’s part of ass-kissing, it doesn’t count!”

“Well maybe if you ever gave me a reason to apologize, you’d hear it from me more often.”

“That’s bullshit. You didn’t apologize for throwing out my emergency snack stash!”

“Because you hid them under my bed ! And they were starting to smell!”

“They were still my snacks man, you could have said something! Like ‘sorry about the loss of rare and hard to get double-stuff oreos!’”

“You’re unbelievable.”

Washington considered just leaving them to it, but decided that he had to say something before things got too far from the original topic. “Simmons.”

“-perfectly legitimate use for a microwave! Uh, what?” Simmons said, just processing that Wash had said anything. Grif looked a little knocked out of the rhythm himself, head turned towards Washington but body still facing Simmons.

“Thanks. Apology accepted. Though I do think you were right to be suspicious, my story… could stretch credibility somewhat.”

Simmons practically lit up neon. “Uh, thanks! I mean- you’re welcome! I mean… yeah.” Simmons ran a hand through his hair again. “I just try to think critically about what I hear, sir!”

Grif punched him in the arm. Simmons yelped.

“OW! What the heck was that for?!”

“Being a lying ass kisser. You never even question orders.”

“I was the FIRST ONE to question orders!”

“No, you bitch about orders. You don’t question them. It’s a subtle distinction but an important one, Simmons.”

And just like that the two of them were back into it, like Washington wasn’t even there. It should have been annoying, excluding, but honestly Wash appreciated it. He sat back onto the bed with a small smile on his face. It was… comfortable. That was the word. For the first time in a long time, Washington felt comfortable.