RvB 10.18

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“It was because of the Inssurectionists.”

CT wasn’t quite sure how they got here. Why they were staying here. What possibly convinced her that here was the best place for them, when not two hours before they had called a truce. Then again, that’s how she always remembered it being with Wash, towards the end.

He looked up at her with that new sardonic scarred smile. “You’re blaming your buddies for it?”

“They weren’t my friends, Wash,” she said, inexplicably defensive. These last few years hiding behind a disguised voice and miles upon miles of sand in every direction. Hiding until a handful of incompetent simulation troopers brought back the one person she had hoped she’d never see again. “I didn’t like leaving you.”

She thought she heard him scoff at that sentence, but it was quiet and under his breath, his eyes turned down to the fire in front of them. He was supposed to be keeping watch, until she decided to be distracting. Just like old times. “It wasn’t the Insurrection, CT.”

“It was the Director, then,” she said easily, quickly. “It was him, his stupid pushing and the program and when he introduced the AIs-“

“You weren’t even there then.” He didn’t say it with malice or resentment. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much to hear.

“But I was there for the scoreboards.”

“Long enough to see yourself fall off of them,” he said quickly, and looked up. The hardest part of seeing this face, nearly unrecognizable, was when he’d try and show concern or regret or sorrow at his words. He always was a terrible actor.

“Some truce,” she muttered. “It was the program, Wash.”

He looked at her, at her face, aged and weathered and with that small glimmer of hope. He knew his words would have to wipe it off, to crush it, and something in him was glad he’d had so much practice doing it, years ago. Like riding a bicycle. “It was us, CT.”

She didn’t say anything, but he saw her look change like he knew it would. “It was-“

“It was us,” he cut her off. “That’s why we didn’t work. That’s why we couldn’t work. It was us, and you know it.”

“I’m going to bed,” she said after a long time of standing, stubbornly, willing him to take it back.

“I’ll be where you left me,” he said with a dry grin at his own joke.

She paused just long enough to quip back, “that’ll be a first.”

completelysane:

The flight is long and Wash is nearly asleep, his chin resting on the inside of his helmet, when York asks if they’re parking. Looking aside Wash sees that York had adopted a nearly identical pose as himself. On the other side of the bay, the twins are relaxed back against their restraints, chins up. 

So Wash isn’t quite awake when 479 announces that they’re about to drop like a rock, and she snaps at him immediately when he responds to her. He almost opens his mouth to snap back, but Delta pops up and the details of the mission come flooding back. Insurrection base. Retrieval mission. No need to leave anybody alive.

Wash starts to make an excuse to 479, to save face, but then the rhythm of the words make him hear other ones so clearly in his head:

Don’t make excuses for me. I’m not making excuses for myself.

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I really love that you wrote about that one moment, because I noticed it too and thought it odd and now this is on my dash and

and this is headcanon’d so fucking hard, seriously.

Nem, how do you always know how to be so incredibly excellent in life?

“Ready for training?” York asked, clapping Wash on the shoulder in the process with a little more force than necessary.

“Sure,” Wash coughed out. “Yeah. You know, it wasn’t my fault that you got run over by another car last mission.”

York scoffed his sarcastic agreement. “What kind of friend would I be if I held onto a thing like that into the next training mission?”

Wash gave this some thought. “A vindictive, cruel, takes-a-joke-way-too-far, unprofessional, total dick kind of friend?”

“See?” York said enthusiastically. “I am none of those! Well, maybe some of them, but not all of them.”

“Yeah,” Wash answered, unconvinced, and the mission started.

It pleasantly surprised Wash that the oddest thing about the training mission turned out to be his teammates. Of course, with the exception of York, who behaved himself quite well and maturely and Wash was now convinced that his friend had something even more sinister planned.

North was first, when he passed Wash at the start of the mission he turned around and clapped his hands together as he said with a very noticeable mocking smile, “we always hoped you two kids would get together!”

His twin wasn’t far behind as she muttered “about damn time, too,” and left it at that.

Wyoming spoke towards the middle of the mission, while he was reloading his gun and Wash was covering him. “It’s great that you two finally felt comfortable enough to make it public.” By the time Wash thought to ask what the hell he was talking about, Wyoming had already jumped over his cover, gun at the ready, and ran into battle.

Carolina, right at the end, grabbed Wash by the shoulder while they waited for the others to catch up to their safe point and said, very flatly, “don’t think this changes anything,” before rushing off to finish the objective.

“What did you do?” Wash whispered to York as they were walking back to the locker room.

“What?” York said. “I was professional! Did you see how professional it all was? I didn’t even hit on Carolina while I opened the lock!”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, give me a break, Mr. Paranoid,” York muttered and Wash could clearly hear the eye roll which accompanied the words. Wash dropped the subject.

It was only after Wash removed his shoulder plates that it all clicked into place, and when his head shot up looking for the offender, he found that York had perfected almost-light-speed armor removal because he was no longer in the locker room. The back of Wash’s left shoulder had a very white, very obnoxious sticker that read “Team I LOVE NY!”

((Inspired by this post.))

Carolina: Hi. I’m Agent Carolina from the popular webseries, Red vs Blue.

Wash: And I’m Agent Washington.

Carolina: We here at Red vs Blue have noticed a trend on the blog site tumblr.

Wash: A trend characterized by apparently common phrases we didn’t know existed. Phrases such as [chart] “All the feelings”, “dying right now”, and “I used to have a heart, then I joined roostertumblr”.

Carolina: These seem to have been brought on by various pieces of fiction about the characters of Red vs Blue.

Grif: [off camera] Fanfiction.

Carolina: …What?

Grif: [off camera] It’s fanfiction, and it’s stupid.

Simmons: [off camera] Yeah, and also, no one in this canyon has ever written any. Ever.

Grif: [off camera] …What?

Wash: God dammit! I can’t have ONE thing to myself.

Grif: [off camera] You asked me to film it, did you also expect me to do it quietly? Anyway, the reason fanfiction is stupid is that it takes so much time. You can spend that time doing things like not working, eating, sleeping, not working…

Simmons: [off camera] Maybe Donut wrote some, but no one else here has ever written any. Ever.

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“He can’t see you,” Cas said carefully. The woman shrugged.

“Yeah. Well. It’s a slow day,” Tessa replied, watching as Dean sat on the hood of that stupid car he always drives around. Beers clinking with Sam. The odd parking lot overlooking a mountain’s stream. “He can’t see you either.”

“Slow day,” the angel repeated with a barely-there smile. Cas continued to stare at her. “But why are you here? You’re a reaper.”

“And you’re an angel.”

“Barely,” Cas whispered under his breath. “Are they going to die?”

She looked at Dean before she responded. Looked at him smile as Sam was correcting his story from their childhood, interjecting “I wasn’t scared” and “that’s not what happened” and the occasional smack away of a barely-offending pointing finger. She looked at him and glanced at her invisible companion. “Not today.” She shrugged her way back to the two brothers. “Not that death means anything to them anymore. You angels just pop them right back, two good-as-new vessels.”

“So you’re here to lecture me,” Cas said with a certain resignation that showed he was almost asking for it.

“No. I’m here because…because we’ve got a thing.” She nodded to Dean, on his beloved Impala. Cas followed her stare.

“I don’t understand,” he confessed after a moment.

“I’m his reaper.”

“I didn’t think humans get personal reapers,” the angel said, as unassumingly as he could.

“Humans aren’t usually repeat customers.” She crossed her arms and turned her face and body towards Cas with a sigh. “Every time he dies, Castiel, I guide his soul to move on, and he goes to heaven, and you guys send him right back.”

Cas managed to make a show of looking guilty, even though he was far removed from heaven at this point. His faith had found a new focus now. “He doesn’t remember,” Cas realized.

“He shouldn’t remember,” she clarified. “So sometimes I stop by. To see what he does with the days he’s alive.”

“But you don’t show yourself.”

She smiled. “Like I said. We’ve got a thing.”

completelysane:

reeberry:

completelysane:

reeberry:

completelysane:

reeberry asked you:

Church never got the hang of possessing someone and looking through their memories. It was always high pressure situations of on the spot jumping into someone else’s skin, intense focus, and no time to wonder about their name or their family back home or when their first kiss was. But when he jumped into Wash, in those last few minutes, the Freelancer’s memories opened up like a book. It could have been force of habit, but Church got the feeling that Wash was *showing* him, like a proud child.

Connecticut wasn’t a surprise, really, although the vividness of the memories coupled with Wash’s uncaring affect was. Church thought ‘this guy actually got a girl once?’ and ‘naming them all after states was the hokiest thing that old man ever thought of but it does have a ring to it’, and ‘dude, it’s crowded in here’. Wash’s mind seemed to shift. Never a stable landscape, it showed pictures and feelings that almost overwhelmed Church. Maybe this was why Wash was so OCD on the surface. But there was also that pride in his mental landscape, a straight-shouldered kind of demand to be heard.

All Church said was, “You know I can see why you didn’t want anyone else in your head. Got some pretty heavy stuff going on there.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Wash said firmly.

“Finally got the place how you like it, huh?” Church said, the new experience still grating. Through the waves under his feet came the waves of memories, bombarding his mind, glowing fondly as they showed the other agents, his friends. Glowing fondly with happy images, vivid memories, instances Wash cherished to keep for himself.

Next came the wave of feelings associated with the scenes. If Church still had a body, he would have staggered back at the sudden dump. It had been like that since he came through, but, still, every time it caught him by surprise. Under that current of apathy Wash had built up lay a carefully laid out web of vibrant emotion, probably inaccessible even to Wash’s conscious mind. It was there for a second, long enough to wind the breath Church didn’t need or shouldn’t have been holding out of his body, and it was gone again, just as quickly, just as violently.

He supposed it was normal for the agent to give himself so completely to any mental intruder. A reaction hammered into him by the Director, a habit he never had to break because he never thought it’d come up again. (Or maybe it was a remnant of a defeat, a lack of fighting in a battle that Church wasn’t even aware of, despite being the attacker.)

“Something like that,” Wash said.

Epsilon wasn’t here any more, although part of Church instinctively looked for him. The memory unit had left scars, as visible to Church in this mental space as if someone had scarred Wash’s face in the real world. Church didn’t want to examine those further. First of all it was boring. Dead memories were dead. Second of all, though, Epsilon now was only something dark and rotten and scabbed over. A ghost of a ghost. It was hard enough for the living to deal with that, but in the mental space, Church could have been lost in it.

So he controlled it instead, took stock of himself, and kept talking. “You’ve got all of this in here because of me?”

“Not because of you.” It’s hard to tell what someone’s movements are when Church isn’t actively trying to possess them, but that straight-shoulder impression gets more foreceful. Wash is walking out of the vehicle bay. “Because of the Director.”

“Yeah, but, he’s me. Or he was, anyway.” Church’s mechanical voice is almost sarcastic. “He put Epsilon inside your head, and we’re meeting up with him to…get Epsilon, or something? I get a little confused when nobody’s talking about me.”

“We’re going to kill the Meta.” Wash is jogging now. “Do you really want to take credit for what went on inside my head?”

Church doesn’t answer that. Instead, he says, “So, if I’m the Alpha - which I am still not sure about, by the way - shouldn’t I have some sort of magic ghost power over the other AI?”

“They want you,” Wash said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have any power.”

Church cackled. “Doesn’t necessarily mean - yes it does! They want me. I’m like the messiah to their enslaved peoples, the freaking moth to their flame.”

Wash paused to think about this, the idea that his passenger was a messiah, paused to reflect how utterly sad it all was, and was promptly reminded of the lack of privacy in his own head at the moment.

“Hey, I’d make a fucking good messiah,” Church said defensively.

“They should all be thankful your holy weapon can’t possibly be a gun,” the agent said with a forced smile, a forced joke, a forced lightness to the situation to distract him from the fact that Church was in his head, that someone else was hearing his thoughts, that privacy was once again long gone, and yet more secrets had taken its place.

“It’s a sniper rifle,” Church said, crossing his arms in Wash’s head with such gusto that Wash slowed down his running and almost repeated the gesture. “Oh, fuck you too, buddy.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Wash said defensively, picking up speed again.

“You didn’t have to, I felt it, man! Your entire mind rang with laughing and disbelief.” He said this and Wash could hear the childish pout, so out of place with the memory of the last time this voice had been in his head. “I can hear it, you know.”

“I know.”

“Can’t we turn it off or something? Can’t I just be a quiet passenger and not have a first class pass to your…you?”

“Sure, Alpha. You start being quiet, we’ll call that step one.”

Church looked around as he became aware of the tiny amount of glee giving this snarky command inspired in Wash. “It’s Church.”

“Right.”

“Don’t just fucking ‘right’ me, man, it’s my name.” Church was starting to get used to the sensation of being a passenger, or invader, or whatever he’d qualify himself as. Intruder. That’s what Wash’s mind supplied, easily, and Church realized he also wasn’t alone in his brain. It made his not-technically-existent neck itch. “I call you Wash.”

“David,” Wash supplied in a flash of insight about name association and it suddenly became very important for Church to call him David where Epislon and the Director himself had always called him Agent Washington, where all his old friends always called him Wash.

“Fine, David, but don’t you start calling me ‘Leonard’.”

“I’d rather not repeat that name anyway.”

“Right, right, because that the Director. And we’re going to kill him, or something?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t sound so confidant. I can tell what you’re thinking, remember? You want order because chaos is freaking scary to you.”

“What I’m scared of doesn’t matter.” Wash pulls his rifle a little bit closer to his chest, but that might be more because they’re nearing the round-topped buildings that are their destination than because of any emotional distress. Church can’t quite tell. There’s a difference between reading someone’s mind and reading their thoughts. Personal history was easy, especially when Wash opened up like he had, like somebody proudly showing off battle scars. But the pride had been a quick reaction that was almost gone now that Church had threatened to make the scars worse. Church was feeling disorientation again, like when he’d possessed Lopez and not been able to understand the words coming out of his own mouth.

In Church fashion, though, he said, “So I’m right.”

Wash’s voice was very flat. “I thought you could tell what’s in my head. Don’t you know whether or not you’re right?”

“I’m pretty sure. But it isn’t exactly a road map in here. Did Epsilon cause all this mess, or is it just you?”

Wash said, “I don’t know.” He had slowed his pace but the building was still getting closer anyway. Church thought about the EMP that they had come here to activate. He was going to die for this war. Again.

“So I’m going to die for a cause neither of us understand. Great.”

Then the pride came back. For a moment Wash showed him, with a practiced sort of mental shrug, the Freelancers lining up in front of a glowing blue board.

“No,” Wash said. “I think you understand it perfectly.”

“I don’t really have your motivation, man. It’s not like I can relate to you guys,” Church said with a frown, and he felt Wash smile. “What?”

“Motivation,” Wash echoed.

“Oh, right, I’m the Alpha, so my motivation got stripped away and now it’s fucking Kilo or something, blah-de-fucking-blah.”

“Kilo isn’t a Greek letter.”

“So sue me, my knowledge of Greek must’ve been sliced away too,” Church spat back hastily. “Look, all I’m asking for is a cause, all right? Isn’t that what people go into battle for? How hard can it be to find one I’ll get?”

“I gave you a cause,” Wash said easily, his memories still streaming the project, the scoreboards, the Freelancers themselves.

“You gave me your cause. Don’t you think I should get one of my own, if we’re going to do this?” Wash stopped walking. “What, what’s happening?”

“How many times have you died, Church?” His brain patterns were changing again, lighting up and moving and Church thought he’d get used to it, he got used to being in people’s heads after a while, but Wash was too…too intense for that. Maybe because Wash knew he was there, but it was like every time Church started to get settled, everything had to go and change on him.

For one brief, hilarious moment, he actually thought about counting. “Does ‘too many’ count as an answer?”

“And what if this is the last one?” Wash said this carefully, tentatively, as if to ease Church into the idea. As if to ease Church into it now, after spending the last ten minutes insisting that he was Alpha, that he was an AI, that the EMP would kill him. “Your last death?”

“Well,” Church said with a smile. “At least it won’t be Caboose this time.”

This got a chuckle out of his host as Wash began walking again.