Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The nice thing about no longer living in the middle of a war is that Tucker can finally see his kid again. (The not so nice thing is how with all the unspent adrenaline nowadays they all flinch at nothing and reach for their guns more often than they need to, and then the friend-and-family civilians filing in give them these looks, but yeah - he thinks that seeing Junior more than balances out the unfamiliarity of peacetime.)

The first hour after Junior arrives, Tucker sits with him and they talk about everything that comes to mind. Tucker gets caught up on everything that's happened in Junior's life since they were separated. They could have gone on forever in the empty training room he'd sequestered them in, but eventually he lets the conversation wind down in favour of getting some food for both of them. He stands, stretches his legs, and puts his helmet back on; after glancing down the hallway both ways, he beckons for Junior to follow.

"We have to be careful, people might want responsibility and shit from me - oh hey Wash." Tucker jerks to a stop just in time to keep them from colliding, and spares a thought of grateful nostalgia for how if Junior hadn't stopped in time they all three would be in a pile on the ground right now. His kid's gotten so big, he thinks fondly. "What are you doing here?"

"I -" Wash clears his throat, apparently embarrassed. "Guarding this hallway." He tries to straighten his posture and put on an air of officialness, the kind that keeps subordinates from questioning the actions of their commanding officers, but it’s a little late for that (both in the short term and the long).

Tucker looks exaggeratedly back down said hallway, Junior shuffling to the side to make way for his dad’s unnecessary theatrics. "From what? It's a dead end."

"From...” He makes a vague motion with his hand that probably doesn’t mean anything much, and nods to Junior. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” It’s possibly the least smooth transition Tucker’s ever seen, and he’s been through some pretty bumpy conversations.

“Honk,” Junior answers cheerily. Tucker nods his approval of his kid’s manners and turns back to Wash.

“Really, why are you here? You’re not calling another one of your meetings, are you?” He’s not ready to drop this until Wash stops looking like he’s avoiding Tucker’s eyes even through two layers of helmet.

“Well, yes -” Wash pauses as Tucker groans. “We do need to debrief. But I just thought - I asked Grif where you were, and he said you and Junior went off somewhere, so. I figured you wouldn’t want people looking for you. So I thought, well, the meeting can wait."

“Oh, uh. Thanks, dude. Appreciate the gesture.” There’s a beat of awkward silence.

Wash lifts one shoulder, clearly not comfortable discussing the situation further. "Since you appear to be finished, meet me at the meeting room within a quarter hour. I still need to track down Donut and Caboose." With that, he takes off down the main hallway.

"Well." Tucker glances at Junior. "That's enough time to find you that food."

Grif, predictably, stalled in the process of giving Sister a tour the moment his little group entered the cafeteria. Simmons is still making a token effort, pointing out people who he thinks are important, but Kaikaina ignores him for the most part in favour of chatting up the locals.

"I'll grab you something," Tucker tells Junior. "Go ahead lil dude, try making some friends." Junior’s getting some stares, because giant alien child, but so far no one’s been outright aggressive to him.

Tucker draws up next to Grif and starts putting together what he hopes is a decent meal for a growing half-alien. He squints at the tray and adds a bit more, absently batting away Grif's hand. Tucker turns to survey the crowded cafeteria, but before he can decide on a place to sit down, Simmons approaches in a hurry.

"We were supposed to be at the meeting room three and a half minutes ago!" he squeaks, panicked. Tucker barely has time to hand over the food to Junior before he's being swept along by the Reds, Simmons dragging Grif by the wrist. Sister wanders off somewhere, and Tucker thinks a little regretfully that he’ll be hearing about her exploits soon.

It takes them four more minutes to get to the meeting room, and they collect Donut along the way. Simmons slows down as they draw up to the closed door, raised voices drifting from inside giving them all pause. Sarge and Caboose are already crouched in optimal eavesdropping position, helmets pressed to the door.

"- asking you, what was that? If you just deleted what I think you did -" Carolina's voice, while not quite out of control, is too urgent to be hushed. The fact that she’s addressing it here instead of waiting for somewhere more private can’t be good news. Tucker grimaces and wedges himself in beside the others, abandoning his dignity in favour of staying in the loop.

"Yeah, I uh. Um. Look, can we just -"

"No, Epsilon, we can't 'just'. How many times are we going to do this?"

"Do - do what? You weren't even there all the other times I died!"

Tucker blinks as something occurs to him - someone who had been there all the other times. "Wash is in there, right?" he whispers to Sarge.

"Yup. Hasn't said a word, though."

"That's weird," Tucker notes before Donut hushes them. It isn't so much odd as worrying, come to think of it, because Washington plus Epsilon has never brought good results, historically. Tucker personally prefers loud, shrill Wash to silent Wash. He frowns and turns his attention back to the conversation inside.

"Carolina," Epsilon's saying, "can we save this for later? We don't need to - the Reds and Blues will be coming in here any second now, anyway, and -"

The door swings open. Wash stands behind it, shoulders set stiff and helmet tilted unreadable, impassive. Carolina lifts her head to peer over Wash's shoulder, and Epsilon flickers uncertainly.  Everyone straightens up abruptly, but there's no salvaging the situation.

That doesn't stop Caboose from trying, though. "Oh! Agent Washington! I, we were just, ah." He trails off, and glances behind him for help. Donut lays a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

"What in the blue blazes is going on in here?" Sarge hollers, stepping forward hastily.

Wash doesn't bother snapping at him about the volume. "Carolina caught Epsilon deleting goodbye messages that he'd left in each of our suits of armor, in the event that..." His tone stays even, and he picks up the sentence as if he'd never lost it in the first place. "... in the event that what he planned to do succeeded." There's the slightest hint of bitter emphasis on the last word.

Tucker looks at Carolina, and then Epsilon, alarmed. "What he planned to do?"

"Tucker," Epsilon starts, but Carolina’s helmet tilts at him and he stops.

"Epsilon," Carolina explains, tone lower than the hole Epsilon had just dug himself into, back down to terrifying quiet, "was going to pull another heroic sacrifice. And when things worked out better than expected, he decided to delete the messages, without a word to any of us." She doesn’t look at Epsilon, from all appearances having not noticed he’s there, which is an impressive feat considering he’s in her head. “Neither of us know what he was thinking, pulling -”

"I was thinking I made a mistake, okay, and I was -"

"Hoping no one would notice? That's not how making things better works. You can't just ignore things and let them get -" She breaks off. Takes a step back. Tucker makes a note to never bring up the downsides of avoidance or miscommunication around her.

"All right.” Tucker steps in. He’s less angry than he feels like he should be; maybe he spent all his ‘giving a shit’ points on all the times Church actually left, and maybe this will sink in properly later. “I'm fucking tired of this." He turns to Epsilon, who flickers again like he's thinking about turning off the projection and hiding somewhere. "You've deleted all of them?"

"Yeah, I - yeah."

"Then there's nothing we can do about it. Church is an asshole, the Freelancers are really wound up and need a goddamn break, and the rest of us would like to get back to lunch." He throws his hands up. "I don't see any news here!"

Tucker may have made a decent point - at least, he thinks so - but Carolina hasn't stopped doing that thing with her body language that makes everyone, even Sarge, a little more on edge. Epsilon still looks like he might actually be considering saying something else, as if the situation needs to get any worse, and Wash is standing so still that it's distracting.

"Yeah, I don't like agreeing with Tucker," Caboose starts cautiously, "but I think that lunch would be very nice. Except, ah, Agent Washington."

"Yes, Caboose?" Wash prompts, when it looks like Caboose has stopped suddenly again. The routine situation at least puts some life back in his voice.

"Did you call us here to tell us something? Because, that is what you usually do, but this time all we did was watch Tucker talk to Carolina about yelling at Church, and I was thinking it's okay if you just missed us."

"What?" Wash's shoulders loosen - in confusion, yes, but at least he's relaxing - and Tucker breathes a quiet sigh of relief.

"It's okay if you called us here just because you missed us. I try to do that sometimes too but less people listen to me. And we just had a very big, scary battle. So it's okay."

Almost ten seconds of silence pass. "Yeah, I - Caboose, I. Thanks."

Tucker's pretty sure that Wash had actually been hoping for a mission briefing of some sort, but since that's always a cover for a "thank God we're all alive" party anyway, he just leans back to watch Caboose try to coerce everyone into a group hug and the Reds all make various excuses to hang around for a little while longer.

At least everything can settle back down now, Tucker thinks. At least they'll have time to sort through all their shit, if nothing else.

Chapter Text

Washington is picking back up his habit of going on walks to clear his mind. He feels like he hasn't done that consistently since - since the desert, and the Meta, and Doc. He's left the Blues to regroup once or twice since then, but between all the trouble they get themselves up to and the war, he hadn't had the luxury of time to himself or distance from the rest of the army. He really hasn't felt the need to be alone for a while, because as much as his new family tires him, they're still good company.

And it's better to keep busy than to dwell on things he can't do anything about. It would be smarter, he knows, to seek out one of the Reds to talk things out. They have a stake in the Epsilon conflict, but only the same betrayal they share that would let Wash talk to them about it in the first place. He doesn't want to say something that he might regret later, though; he has no idea what he would say about Epsilon if given the chance to be honest, and that thought scares him into setting out for a very long stroll.

He runs into a group of soldiers driving out to an alien temple. It's one of the ones that they're only exploring now, because they didn't have the time or personnel to spare when the conflict was still going on. They wave to him, and he makes a split-second decision to ask if he can join them. There’s something pushing him to get as much physical distance as he can from the others, as if they amplify his worried thoughts. No one minds his silence on the journey there, and he has a fairly restful ride. When they arrive, the soldiers split off to take up their various jobs around the temple, possibly assuming that he’s there with something to do too.

He paces inside the temple for a bit. It isn’t long before a few turns have taken him out of sight of anyone else, and he enters an empty room with a strange alien gateway flickering in the center of it. He's heard a few things about it from Carolina and the others, and from what he can understand there's no reason for him to even go near it. He's spent enough time with his worst fears, thank you very much.

He's about to leave when the portal blinks brighter for a moment, and then he can't remember. Even as he stops and turns around, he isn't sure what he's doing. He was going to leave; or was he going to go look closer? The light blinks again, dims, and - changes colour. He turns and frowns at it. He could have sworn it wasn't blue when he'd been looking at it earlier; or had it been, and now it wasn't? He steps closer, almost without meaning to.

He can hear something. It's soft and muffled, and he tries to figure out whether it's the alien temple messing with his senses or scraps of memory resurfacing again. The light glows blue again, or changes to blue, or it had never been blue and isn't anything but blue; the sounds aren't coming from inside his head but it sounds like an AI's voice echoing in someone's skull anyway. It's Epsilon, it's not Epsilon, he has nothing else to compare to. He takes another step.

He's already closer to the gateway than he'd meant to go, and closer than he'd thought he was. The light flares one more time, and he closes his eyes and raises his arms to shield against the glare. He stumbles forward.

He's alone again. It's dark. He's in the hospital, or he's in jail. It's hard to tell, especially because his eyes are still closed. It's a little bit cold, which doesn't make sense, because he's still wearing his armor. He was still wearing his armor. He's alone.

Agent Washington, he reminds himself. It doesn't help as much as it usually does. He knows who he is, he knows where he's been. He doesn't know where he is. None of the explanations for what point in the timeline he's in makes sense, because all of them mean that he's remembering something wrong and that's always true. He slows down, narrows the options down: after Epsilon. It has to be after Epsilon, because he's alone in his head and he doesn't know what's going on.

He opens his eyes. It's still dark. After Epsilon. After he met the simulation troopers? He remembers them. After he shot Donut, after the Meta - how many has he killed, now, or helped to kill? Maybe this is why he's alone. His thoughts come slow, frustratingly sluggish, and he tries to remember why he started remembering things in the first place.

He's alone. Did they leave him again, and who is 'they' this time? It's dark. He closes his eyes as a sudden wave of exhaustion sweeps over him, and he sinks to the ground. He's alone.

Just as abruptly as it started, Wash is on the floor of the temple and he can think coherently again. He backs up until his back hits a wall and slides down it until he's sitting with his knees drawn up. He keeps his eyes open, watching the portal in case it pulls anything funny again, and hates the fact that this can still happen to him. He hates that, even now, even after everything, he can be reduced to sorting through his memories, figuring out which are real and what order they're supposed to go in, so easily.

He's not sure how long he sits there, telling himself that he'll get up and go back to the base soon before people start wondering where he went, but it must have been at least half an hour because when he looks up at a noise, Carolina's there.

She brought a few of the troops with her, but none of the Reds or Blues. "Wash. Agent Washington, report. Are you okay?" She kneels down to try to peer through his helmet.

He waves weakly. "Yeah, I'm fine, how did you...?"

"I was out with a team to ask Santa some questions about how these temples work." She offers a hand and hauls him back onto his feet. "He stopped mid-sentence and said that something was wrong at one of the other places. I think maybe the space pirates messed with this one, and no one's really gotten close enough to be affected until now." She doesn't ask what Wash was doing inside the temple by himself, and he's not sure whether to be grateful or afraid of how easily she sees through him.

"Affected how?"

"That's what we're here to figure out. You're okay? No severe dizziness, unexplained bleeding...?"

"Shit, now I'm not sure." He's half joking, but he remembers feeling a little lightheaded. Now that he's on his feet, though, he doesn't feel any lasting effects. Beyond the emotional and mental trauma. "I think I'm fine."

"Okay, well, go have one of the medics look you over anyway. The rest of us will check out the portal to make sure nothing's going to explode. Santa wasn't sure what the thing would do without him there to preside over it, and especially if it's been messed with..."

"Explode? Huh." Wash supposes he should count himself lucky. "Well, call me over if anything weird happens."

"You're not doing anything until you're given an all clear by the medics, even if we just find a weird-looking stain on the floor. Understood?"

"Yes, boss." Wash snaps off a shaky salute and makes his way over to the soldiers gathered by the entrance. It isn’t until after she’s gone that he realizes Epsilon didn’t make an appearance. Either he has business back at the base, or he’s here and avoiding Wash, and Wash isn’t sure which option he prefers.

It doesn't take long for the medic to check him over. In the short amount of time that it takes for her to finish, however, a crowd has already formed around the portal where Carolina went to investigate, and she hasn't radioed him about anything yet. He can't help but let the anxious feeling in his gut coalesce into something solid, and he's on his feet the instant he's given the all clear.

He pushes his way through the crowd of muttering soldiers, worst-case scenarios flashing through his head. Three things happen when he breaks through to the other side: there are two sets of armor that he recognizes, instead of one; Carolina is very, very still; Epsilon's screaming fades in, the distance closing until -

He's in Wash's head.

Chapter Text

The painkillers kick in gradually, blurring the edges of York's world. He sees Tex, but she's blurry, too - the only thing that's clear is Delta's voice, and that's only because it's coming from directly inside his head. The bullet wound hurts, but only as a kind of abstract thing. He knows it should hurt, and so it hurts.

Delta's got him, though. Delta has him, even as his vision goes dark and he can't feel anything at all anymore -

He takes a breath. The floor is cold where he's lying, only one layer of cotton between his back and - but that's not right. He should be wearing his armor. He should be outside. He should be dead.

He opens his eyes slowly. The light that filters in through his good eye is the wrong kind for the time of day it is. For the time of day it was when he'd been shot.

He remembers dying, is the thing. He could pretend that he maybe just passed out from blood loss, but then Tex saved him and now he's recovering... on the floor, for whatever reason. But Delta said he wouldn't make it, and Delta wouldn't lie about something like that. He felt like he wouldn't make it. He remembers dying.

And there's no bullet wound, anymore. His sides ache, but both of them symmetrically and only from the cold air entering his lungs. He scrapes his palms against the unfamiliar floor, and pushes himself up. It's easier than he'd expected, so he rises to his feet, too.

The first thing he notices is his armor, piled in a heap a few feet to the right of him. The second thing he notices is the crowd. They're all in armor, which makes him more than a little uncomfortable. He's just either been reanimated or survived a near-death experience, and he thinks a guy ought to get some privacy immediately after the fact. He just wants to sit down somewhere and breathe.

It's pretty clear that he's not going to get what he wants anytime soon, though. Really, if a single thing happens right now that he actually wants, he'd laugh and pinch himself. He finds himself staring at his hands and still hating the blur in his left eye, but the clang of armor knocking against armor makes him look up.

Aqua parts the crowd, just the right shade and the right shape for her helmet, but he doesn't dare to hope. The sound was the crowd parting for her - she moves silently, or as near as possible with a full suit of armor on, and he laughs breathlessly and pinches himself absently just because, yes, that's the way she moves. That's how she stands. He remembers.

She reaches up and pulls her helmet off, and that's when all hell breaks loose.

The first thing is green. The shade of green he's come to associate with comfort, or at least company - [Agent York, the situation] - "Delta? D, what -" He's cut off by louder clanking, the sounds of someone clumsier and more frantic parting the crowd by themselves. He doesn't care about the second thing, because the first - "No, really, where did you...?" - [would not advise] -

"Epsilon!" Carolina's voice breaks through the sudden chaos in York's mind as he really and truly reconciles with the fact that he's alive and he has no idea where Delta is - " Epsilon , no -" One aqua hand over a yellow-lined shoulder; York's too slow recognizing who that should be and then something blue flits from Carolina to -

Washington screams.

"No," Carolina says, and if there's a best and worst time for Carolina to sound panicked, for her voice to climb higher off her stable calm baseline, well. From all his years working with her, York's learned that the best time is never, and the worst time? The worst time is now. "Epsilon, no -"

York turns to face her, barely registering Wash, who's crouched down to his left clutching his head. (He's torn off his helmet, still-armored fingers leaving bruises on his jaw and cheekbones.) He hears Delta's warnings [- your left, watch your left side] - a second too late.

There's a knife at York's throat and all of Wash's weight on his ribs, crushing him and pinning him to the ground. The arm that's not pinned down by Washington's free hand reaches out slowly. There are enough surreal things here to last York another lifetime, but the worst is Delta's steady calm reassuring him that [this is not a simulation, but I cannot confirm or evaluate the likelihood of this being a dream].

He looks up into Wash's face, and thinks: what the hell happened to you, rookie? Wash's hands are shaking, and his eyes are wide and the slightest bit unfocused.

"Epsilon," Delta says out loud, and York turns his head as much as he can toward the pile of his armor. Delta's familiar green projection hovers just above it, his voice echoing in York's head like it always has. "Epsilon, please."

Carolina's saying something, too, but she's frozen a few paces too far away to help York if Wash - if Epsilon moves? York's trying to piece together what's happening, what happened, but there isn't enough information. Delta's so far away.

Epsilon projects out of Wash's armor, but his hologram shakes and shatters and rebuilds constantly. He flickers between colours, including Delta's green, and his voices echo so much that it's impossible to tell what he's saying. York hears Theta, and he aches.

Wash starts muttering, too, and though he's barely more coherent, at least he can't do the freaky multiple-voices thing that Epsilon's doing, so York catches most of his words. "You have to go." It takes York a second to realize that Wash isn't talking to him; he's addressing Epsilon. "You have to go the Director's coming, I think - He's not going to trick us again. It'll -" his voice breaks, cracks open, and York winces. "It'll be okay."

"Wash," York tries. "Wash, buddy, look at me." He already is, but his eyes refuse to focus. What happened, god, what happened? "Look. I can't hurt you." York raises his free hand up over his head, ignoring how vulnerable it makes him feel and Delta's [Risk levels raised. Outcome uncertain.] quiet in the back of his head. He might be getting through, he thinks, just a little. "If you just pull Epsilon for a second -"

"No!" Washington jerks back, hands flying to the back of his neck, and York knows he screwed up. "No, no no, no no no no -"

Carolina lunges forward while he's distracted and tackles him off to the side. Wash struggles, his arms pinned behind his back and his face pressed to the dirt. His knife is somewhere out of reach.

York sits up. He breathes.

In the background, Carolina calls for people York's never heard of: someone called Tucker, a Doctor Grey. "Offline, Epsilon," he hears. More of the crowd is cleared away, those who aren't helping relegated to other tasks, and someone in blue hovers until someone in pink leads him away. York doesn't pay much attention to any of this.

He reaches for Delta, and his armor, and he's halfway through putting it all back on when footsteps come to a stop behind him. He turns, one gauntlet on and the other in his hand. It's Carolina.

He doesn't actually remember much of the conversation, afterwards, what with coming down from the post-revival adrenaline and the cold, detached way she'd interviewed him. All he knows is that she asked him questions for nearly half an hour, until they were both satisfied that none of this can be explained by simulations or robotics or someone who doesn't know Freelancer inside and out playing mind games with them.

York finds out, incidentally, that the Director is dead. He's not sure how to feel about that piece of information, only that Carolina didn't say it in a reassuring way nor did she give any hint as to how exactly it came to pass. He decides not to ask.