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[It would've been easier if he'd showed up sooner, Wash catches himself thinking. He aborts the thought before it metastasizes into something he can recognize as resentment or envy or something worse - packages it away, compressed and compartmentalized and annexed down into a shape he can safely tuck away where he'll never have to look at it again. Unwanted memories and unwanted dreams can go the same place as every other memory that he was never supposed to have.]

[The problem is just that he's never - he'd adjusted to things without realizing that he had, and now there's a new spanner in the works and what's worse is that it's not just any spanner, but one that he owes for all the shit he pulled, the guilt and disgust and blame and everything. Can't just walk away and say, fuck it, deal with things your own damn self. It doesn't work like that. He's not allowing himself that, for all that it might make shit easier.]

[Right now, he's out of armor - a rarity at home that's come to be as standard as anything else here. His current wardrobe isn't the most tactical or tasteful, but...]

[She gave it to him.]

[So he's not about to get rid of it.]

[Hands in his pockets, halfway toward moving to check his allotment of coffee plants from Ignis, and he thinks it's safe enough to say:]

She likes you.

[About on part with 'Wash being nice out of some kind of twisted guilt complex that he's gonna get yelled about at some point' kind of weirdness is 'Wash out of armor'. He didn't even know Tucker was black! Everywhere's practically a battlefield, and he's certainly never seen any Freelancers out of armor. (Maybe he had. Back when he doesn't remember.) So it's...that's a thing. It's a thing that's on the pile of things to learn and get used to and deal with. Even his voice rings oddly without the armor. He just...he just looks like a person. Just David rather than Agent Washington or Recovery One.

Hoodie's cute. Military and cats. He's not sure how much he's even allowed to ask, if do you like cats is too stupid given he's got a giant plant-tiger living with him.

He doesn't suggest that maybe she only likes him when he's thinking too hard about not thinking about things he shouldn't think too hard about.]

Well, yeah, what's not to like?

These things like to climb on top of robots in particular. Just as a fair warning.

[As Legion learned all too well, a robot provides an excellent warm and sunny spot for a cat to just up and sprawl out on, especially in hot weather.]

Just kind of lie out on top of them. I think it's the heat. Like lying on a computer, but...you know. [Comparing robots to computers feels more than a little insensitive, but he has no idea how one gracefully backpedals from that.]

I don't really know anything about cats, personally. Never had one. [Or maybe it wasn't him. Wasn't his memories.] Isn't a jungle island hot enough? Aren't they gonna overheat?

Don't you overheat?

Outside of armor? A little, I guess.

[Armor has temp-reg, but almost everything feels like it's a little less on point than it should be, between his fried H.U.D. and busted comm. He wouldn't be surprised if the temp-regulation was on the fritz too, on top of everything else.]

They're part plant, so the sunlight's good for them. Photosynthesizing, and all.

I mean when a big tiger lays on you. [Him like now, like, outside of temperature regulating space armor.] But I'm more than happy to take all the warmth. Isn't that right, Ami, yes it is, you big lump of love~ [Kitty getting all kinds of lovin'.] Like Caboose but way less stupid.

I mean...sometimes. She's -

[Like Caboose. That freezes him in place for half a second, which would've looked far less obvious out of armor, because as far as Church knows, Wash's familiarity with Caboose began and ended with the assault on Command.]

A friend of mine brought her back. When she vanished, it seemed like I should keep her. Just in case.

[Church's expressions are, conversely, much harder to read. But Wash has certainly been living in and around people in armor long enough to understand blank visor expressions. Like the way he seems to stare at Wash for a moment or two too long. So. Weird. To see him like this.

Vulnerable, in a way.]

Oh, man, you have friends? Are we talking actual friends or 'shoot in the head and then blow up the body' type friends?

[There's no hiding the way his jaw stiffens, clenching, and his shoulders tense up. Sore spot, it turns out.]

I'm talking..."supposed to be dead but then showed up here and it was awkward," type friends. [Not that it matters anymore. She's gone, and he has no way of knowing where she went back to. How she ended up.]

Oh. So you've got like experience with this type of thing. [Like Church showing up.]

...Not that I'm saying we're friends. Obviously. Just. This.

Don't worry. I'd never assume that we're friends.

[A comment that should be sharp and acerbic just comes across as sad and pathetic, and hey, it turns out he kind of hates this! This vulnerability, the unobstructed view Church gets of his face and every shift and flicker of his expression. It feels too much like putting a loaded gun in someone else's hand and trusting that they're not going to shoot you with it.]

Her name was C.T. She... [Does he really wanna go there?]

[He doesn't have a lot of choice.]

She said she knew you.

Yeah? Well then I sure didn't meet her in Blood Gulch. Maybe boot camp?

It's... [He's already said "it's complicated" too many times for that to sound like a reasonable excuse, so Wash simply sighs.]

Here, let me start with - has anyone here...recognized you? Anyone that you definitely haven't met?

...Nnnnn...maybe? I dunno, there was this one girl who was kinda weird? But you're the only one I know.

[Here he was sure that Pyrrha would've. But maybe he hasn't run into her yet. Who knows.]

Well, here's something fun that I found out a couple months ago: there's another you out there. Or there was. Someone who got stuck with a lot of other people who're now here, and lived a whole other... [oh lord is he going to regret asking this but] ...you don't remember getting married at any point, do you?

I'm pretty sure we murdered 90% of myselves, Wash.

[Hm. Did he mean for that to come out so harshly? Did he mean for that to come out at all? They weren't him. But Wash thought they were, and he...doesn't...like to think about the Alpha. Kitty petting kitty petting it's fine.]

But what the fuck do I know.

That's what I thought, but apparently it's a lot less simple than that, because a lot of people here have memories involving you that I didn't know existed.

[This would be a wonderful time to segue into ABOUT THAT, and bring up how Epsilon is, you know, A Thing.]

[A wonderful time to do it, Wash realizes painfully, as he continues to not bring it up.]

Like getting married? [He laughs, but it's skewed, more towards scoff.] The last person I thought I was gonna marry ran off and joined the Freelancers. ['And also is a ghost memory AI part of me, I guess, I think,' he does not add.] Who would I even get to officiate? Sarge?

It'd put a new spin on shotgun wedding...

I'm just saying that's a memory of someone else's that I saw. C.T.'s. She remembered it, and...it complicates things, is all I'm saying.

[As if he didn't have enough of seeing memories that weren't his, right.]

A friend's memory of a different me getting married. Well...at least someone wants to bone a robot! Score one for me. Who's the lucky lady, huh? Or, oh man, it...it wasn't her wedding, was it?

No, it was...you were human. And the other guy was, uh...

[It was Ardyn, but like...he doesn't want to say a "better" version, but maybe a more well-groomed one? One that looked definitively happier. Knew how to smile like a real human being and everything, and not like someone who was trying to force a shape seen in other people's lips, effecting some vague approximation.]

You...haven't met Ardyn, have you?

Whoa, I was human? Was I hot? Tell me I was hot.

...Wait, Ardyn, the uh. Theeeee guy living with Ignis the birdman?

...

I mean I could live with that, y'know, visually speaking, but...I...definitely don't understand in the, uh, broader concept of me having met him in another parallel dimension and thennnnnn...marrying. That.

Oh my god, why is that your priority.

[He doesn't remember ever putting his face in his hands, but at some point, he started massaging the bridge of his nose between pinched thumb and forefinger as if that would be enough to ward off the budding headache.]

Yes, that one. A different one. Presumably you'd known each other for a while at that point, but I don't know. Just don't - ask Ardyn about it. I don't think he was very happy to see that on display.

Why wouldn't that be my priority! I've been a robot for so long I barely remember what being human was like; of course I wanna know if I was hot!

I bet I was totally hot and you just don't want to admit it.

[He will take the not asking Ardyn thing under advisement but no promises will be made. Wash doesn't have to know that.]

You looked happy. [Wash is not and never has been any kind of judge when it comes to how objectively or subjectively attractive someone is, all right.]

That's what I remember.

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