lifeaftr | November catchall

Who: CT and you!
What: Hanging around, trying to recall her lost memories...or maybe just enjoying life without them
When: Early to mid November
Where: Enso
Warnings: None!

CT followed a ghost off a cliff last month, with a result that honestly shouldn't surprise anyone. The gap in her memory became apparent pretty quickly, but although she knows she's missing a lot, try as she might, she hasn't even been able to remember so much as a second of it.

On the one hand, that sucks. She hates not knowing what had happened to her, hates how cryptic Wash has been about the whole thing, hates the fact that she can't even remember the man who urged her to her willing death. Helplessness has never sat well with her, but in this case, there doesn't seem much that she can do.

On the other hand, she's living without the burden of a lot of pain and horror and loss that's been weighing on her for months. Rather than mooning over her absent fiance and dreaming of the day she'll get back to him, she's actually enjoying life on the islands. It is, after all, the first real home she can remember having. Intermittent horrors and punishments for dying aside, it's actually pretty nice here. She lives with her friends on a tropical island, she has no worries and no responsibilities beyond figuring out what to eat and how to get Wash to wear actual clothes rather than his armor once in a while, and whenever she's able to forget that gaping hole in her memory, she's actually pretty content.

The recent renovations to the huts and cottages mean that she's no longer working just to get the roof patched up and the floor resembling, well, a floor. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to do. Today, she's hanging around the cottage that she shares with Carolina and Wash, opening the windows, occasionally sweeping out dust, and going in and out of the door, occasionally picking a few wildflowers in the grass outside to take back inside.

God help you, Freelancers, your roommate's being domestic.

(Feel free to use the prompt or your own, or hit me up for a closed starter!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She knows who the Alpha is, of course. She'd known before any of the rest of them. But even so, even with all of her research and all of her knowledge, what he's saying makes no sense. ]

How...

[ She furrows her brow, and God help her, Wash, she's trying to understand, trying to find a way to believe him. Because it's not that she wants to treat him with kid gloves, or think that he's crazy again, or make him (understandably) frustrated and angry. She doesn't want any of that.

But. ]

How did a sim soldier get their hands on the Alpha?

They relocated him. They manufactured a stalemate in an outpost so far removed from everything that no one would think to look for him there.

[He said this all to a man who refused to accept his identity until it stared him dead in the face in the form of the pieces of his own fractured, digital soul. When the Meta put a bullet in Wash's chest and it was only the grace of the haloed static fuzz of white and cobalt that gave him enough time to pull the goddamn trigger on all of them.]

He didn't know who he was. But neither did anyone else. Florida was supposed to be his handler, but...it went off the rails.

[ Sorry, Wash, she's still not getting it. CT just stares, shocked and horrified. ]

They gave the Alpha to Florida?

[ "Off the rails" is right. She doesn't even want to think about how badly that particular implantation must have backfired. ]

[Now it's his turn to give C.T. the Blood Gulch Chronicles: Abridged Edition, and he has no idea where to start. He wasn't there for any of it, and what's more - ]

[It's unreal. She calls him Alpha without a second thought, when she once laid into him for referring to him as the same. It doesn't occur to her not to.]

It didn't last long. Florida died, the deployment order got fucked, and Wyoming almost ended up killing everyone.

[ Why would it? The Alpha is just a program to her, something that's brought nothing but pain and anguish to all of them. They'd all have been better off if he - it - had never been created.

He's not her friend. Not someone she misses and cares about and wants so fiercely to protect against everything that's been done to him. ]

Wyoming?

[ Another betrayal. Another Freelancer turning on their own. Not that she can talk. ]

I thought - I thought you said Maine was the one who -

Look, it got - complicated. Gamma was there, Tex got involved, and...I wasn't around for any of it. The bottom line is that Wyoming is dead, Texas is dead, Maine is dead, and Church - the Alpha - he's dead too.

[So there, right? Problem fucking solved. No need to worry about the dead and buried, except that they can still materialize here postmortem. Evidence, case, and point, right in front of him.]

They're all gone. And you weren't happy to learn that what happened to Church was on me.

[ How could everything have turned into such a mess? Just the words Texas is dead sound...wrong. She'd known that much, Wash had given her the body count a long time ago, but still, she can't reconcile the Project's number one freelancer, top of the board, her friend, with...that. With just being gone.

She tilts her head, as if trying to recall something dancing at the edge of her memory, something she can't quite pin down. Because she does remember Wash telling her...something like this. Something about bringing down the Project. About a necessary sacrifice. And she remembers being angry at him, being shocked and upset and grieving, but for the life of her she can't remember why. ]

I don't...understand.

[ She frowns, brow furrowing. Trying to remember. Why would she care? Tex had been her friend, but Tex had been special. Different. ]

He was just an AI.

[He was just an A.I.]

[In his mind's eye, he can hear the sound of pixel-static ghosting into nothingness with the broken-glass implosion of one fragment deconstructing himself utterly, pulling himself into pieces the way that the Alpha fought tooth and nail to prevent. The lightning crackle of an electromagnetic pulse, scourging Command clean of every inch of tech. Like it or not, there's no escaping it. Whether it's by someone else's hand or his own, Church is doomed, always, to end up giving himself to other people.]

[By design, he can't allow himself to get attached to them, when they come, because they always end up going too soon. He's too busy ensuring that Caboose doesn't come to pieces, and that Tucker doesn't verbally eviscerate someone else in the throes of his own grief.]

He was your friend.

[ She just looks at him, for a long, long moment, trying to imagine any scenario in which that could possibly be the case.

It's not just that the Alpha is an AI. It's that he's the Alpha. He's Leonard Church. He's - essentially, at his core - the same man who had pushed and manipulated them all for so long. Who had put his agents into danger and pitted them against each other and, ultimately, decided that they were all expendable.

He was her friend?

CT shakes her head, leaning back against Amitusha and rubbing her eyes. Suddenly, she's exhausted. ]

Sure, Wash.

Whatever you say.

[That spikes it all over again, barbs curling up against his heart. She shuts down, and he doesn't know what to say other than to press the point, explain a scenario he wasn't there for and justify a friendship that he never actually witnessed.]

[He gets up. There's no going back to sleep after this.]

Forget it.

[ Well, it's not like she'd thought that would go over well. She scowls, raking a hand through her hair in frustration and sitting up as Wash peels himself out of bed. ]

Where are you going?

I need some air.

[He's up now, so he might as well...take a walk. Secure a perimeter that doesn't exist.]

Don't think I'll be getting any more sleep after this.

[ Is he mad at her? Is he still shaken by his dreams? She can't tell, and the most frustrating part is that he won't tell her himself. Won't even let himself lash out at her, when she's never once hesitated to do the same to him.

It's late, but CT herself is wide awake now and restless. She hops off the bed, trailing after him as he leaves the room.

Probably he wants to be alone. But something in her doesn't want to just leave him be. Wants to poke at him, if only to get some kind of reaction. ]

I'll come with you.

[To tell her no feels...petty. Wrong. He looks from her to the tigerlily that woke him, and doesn't know what to do about the toxic clench in his chest. Swallows it down, ignores the way it tastes like bile.]

[The lack of a helmet means that she can probably see the uncertainty, every flicker of hesitation. He's too used to people simply not being able to read that.]

All right.

[But in the end, he doesn't know how to refuse.]

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