lifeaftr | home sweet home? (closed)

Entry tags:

home sweet home? (closed)

Who: Leonard Church and Agents Washington, Texas, and Maine
What: Meetings, reunions, and definitely no awkwardness.
When: shortly after the April intro log
Where: Islet #4, Cottage #3
Warnings: canon typical language

[ What's better than a group of space marines with lots of interpersonal baggage? Plucking them all from different points in time, then shoving them in the same house and seeing what happens.

MINGLE POST. Make your own top-levels, tag around, go nuts. ]

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Wash--[He can't help the small way he gets louder, like if he could talk over Wash, it'll be okay. If he can talk louder than his own thoughts. Right now it's stuck on a loop of made from a copy of the Director's brain, and god damn it, he's already had enough fucking bombshells from Wash already, hasn't he?] What the hell are you saying? [They were talking about Maine. How did they bumble into this again?]

Do you want me to explain it or not, Church? You said you didn't care, but do you?

[How far back does he need to step? You're not talking to Epsilon. You're talking to an amnestic husk of traumatized A.I. that used to be the Alpha, that has none of those memories, that only has phantom memories of what was done to him, or did you forget?]

The Director. The Director of Project Freelancer? His name was Dr. Leonard Church.

[There are several ways to react to this, few of which are pleasant. It feels like static turned up in his mind, and for a few long moments, he doesn't even see Wash. He's somewhere else entirely. He wants to yell, take Wash by the shoulders and shake him, or punch his stupid lights out. How much worse can this get? Why does it always seem to be able to get worse?

The static doesn't clear completely, but how he reacts is intimately familiar to Wash, and probably the best option right now. He scoffs.]

Bullshit.

[But he feels like he's saying it from far away.]

A.I. don't come from nothing, Church. Smart A.I. are made from human neural patterns.

[And which human would the Director most trust, in terms of judgment? Which human would the Director want in his corner?]

[The only one he ever wants.]

All AI are based on a human mind. Yeah. I heard you the first time. What you didn't say was that the Director, what, copied his own brain so he could run things from two locations? Nobody would've let him do that. What the fuck, man. You think I'm gonna believe that? That I'm him?

What the fuck.

You're not him. You're...you evolved from the template of his brain that he used to make the Alpha A.I.

Church, you're already a better person than he was because you actually gave a damn about the agents in the Project. You were running the numbers that were meant to keep us all safe.

[It was tormenting the Alpha with countless no-win scenarios that resulted in alleged deaths of those agents that began to break him, after all.]

Riiiight, right, I was better than him, that's why I let him fuck with my head until I couldn't remember anything but his own name.

I don't know why you're convinced that's supposed to make me feel better about it! Cuz even if I was that, even if I was...the Alpha, who was based off the fucking Director, I'm not that anymore--and you know about all the pieces that came off! Sigma, Gary, O'Malley, we're talking shit that's bad news if not fucking evil, okay!

And what the fuck is that supposed to make Tex!

That wasn't your fault. You're not responsible for what he did to you. For what he made you do to yourself.

["How can you say that?"]

[He never wanted to avoid blame. Refusing the possibility that those failures were anything but failures, that they were anyone else's fault but his own.]

Tex was the first...the first piece to really actualize and separate from the Alpha, without any external stimulus.

But she wasn't a bit of personality or compartmentalized emotion--you said she, she was someone the Director loved.

Yeah. She was.

She was...powerful enough to be her own person. To split from the Alpha and be who she was, separate from him, but - she was a part of him at first.

[He doesn't know how it happened with Epsilon; if it was forceful or willed into being or intentional or simply a byproduct of him being who he was, and reclaiming the memories that Alpha discarded.]

[But it was just as cataclysmic.]

I don't understand. I don't understand all this stupid metaphysical bullshit.

[Wash keeps pulling this on him like it's some kind of trap he keeps falling into. Dangling something and then Church stumbles into it, claims he doesn't want to know, and Wash calls him out on it. Because of course he wants to know. That's the whole problem. It'll haunt him the rest of his life if he doesn't.]

...She knows, right? She's known all along. Did she know about the Director?

I don't think she did at first. We just thought she was another agent like the rest of us. But at some point when most of the Project's agents went rogue, when she went rogue...I think that's when she figured it out.

[When she tried to break him out - and failed.]

And it was way too late by then. Everything had already happened, right? But why--why did the Director do what he did? I know what you told me, I remember, not enough AI for the experiments. [It fractures itself to protect itself.] But, what, so he--he stuck someone he loved in some armor to be a badass Freelancer? But she had Omega. He gave a fragment a fragment, that doesn't make sense, what did he think would happen?

[He's trying to keep it together, turn this into 20 questions so he doesn't run off on Wash again. He doesn't know that he's succeeding. He knows where this is going, more exploding and yelling and arguing, because that's what happens when Wash decides to treat him like this, and he can barely stop it because of course he wants to know.]

She was different from the start. Remember how I told you - it's like she was getting special treatment. None of us could understand why.

[Until now.]

He wanted her to be the best. I think he was just trying...trying to get her right. Trying to remake her or recreate her or - [He almost chokes on the words, revulsion coiling up in his throat.]

Trying to turn her into the person he remembered.

[He hadn't...done any of that, had he? Didn't have the technology or the knowhow--but then again. If she knew and didn't say, if she just...went along with whatever he said or implied about their relationship, isn't that something of the same thing? Does claiming ignorance, no matter how true, negate the harm done?

You're bound to have some residual memories. They're just not yours.]

I hate this, and I hate you. [And he hates himself the most.]

Thanks.

[What the hell else does he say to that? Isn't it deserved?]

Look, Tex might be able to tell you better. She probably can. You'd just...have to ask her.

I foresee that conversation going really, really well, can't wait to have it. [He's not really looking at Wash, though it's...harder to tell with him.] I'm gonna leave now.

With your cat.

Fine.

[Oh, fuck. He almost forgot the entire reason they were having this conversation in the first place - ]

Wait, wait. Just - if you see Maine, don't freak out on him, all right? He doesn't know any of what's going to happen. He doesn't know what the Meta even is.

Well then MAYBE you should TELL HIM because you seem REALLY GOOD at TELLING PEOPLE some REAL FUCKED UP SHIT ABOUT THEMSELVES!

[There it is. There it is, building for a while. He was hoping to beat it out the door and avoid another screaming match, but it there's, it's out of his mouth instead of rotting in his gut, and now they both have to deal with it.]

[For a minute, he misses his helmet, because there's no hiding the startled flinch, the way his mouth opens, and then the slow, defeated closing of his eyes. He doesn't school his expression into stillness quickly enough.]

[There's no right answer to that, he knows.]

I know.

[That's about the only thing he's good for, right now.]

[It's a dual response and he hates that, too. Part of him finds satisfaction in seeing Wash flinch, to agree, to recognize what an ass he's being, has been from the word go.

But it also twists something, like an ache, like he wants to stuff the words back in or apologize and soothe it. And he hates that bite of regret nibbling at him. Why the fuck should he regret causing Wash any pain? Why the fuck should he ever listen to this guy ever again?

Before was deliberate. This was an accident. He thinks. He thinks it was, but who's he to say anymore? He takes a breath, points a finger, like he's going to AND ANOTHER THING him--

Doesn't. Just. Lets it drop. And makes his way out. It's just short of a run. It's definitely not a run. He's not running. That would be cowardly. It's just a little bit short of that.]

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home sweet home? (closed)

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