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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.

...Oh.

[Somehow that didn't occur to him. It really...should have, huh? Ami gets more gentle pettings down her plant-based spine, and Church decides to focus his attention there.]

I mean, yeah, no shit, I would hope I'd be happy on my wedding day.

[He can't think of anything to say to that.]

[It's hard to look at him. This isn't unusual. He's just...increasingly difficult to look at, the longer this conversation goes on for. The way happiness seems peripheral and unattainable and what's he supposed to say?]

Anyway. If people recognize you, that'd be why. They knew a different...you.

Really wouldn't be the first time, huh. [Between him and Alpha. And Epsilon. And Beta Eta Iota Omega Gamma Theta Delta Sigma.

A him that moved on from Tex and got comfortable and happy enough with someone else to marry them. That's one of the weirder things he's heard. He can't...imagine that.]

No. It wouldn't.

[Again, the window is perfect. It's perfect, and he should discuss what needs discussing, before someone else shows up out of nowhere and tips over the fragile balance they've managed to cement in place.]

[With an effort that feels almost painful, that's wrenching in its resistance, he forces himself to say it:]

That's...actually something we should talk about. In terms of what happened, after the E.M.P.

You mean after you lived and I died.

[Plain and simple fact that's already difficult to live with. Given...that he's...living. His hands still on fur, but he still doesn't raise his visor face to Wash.]

We don't...have to. Probably. We don't have to talk about anything. I mean, fuck, we could start from scratch if we really wanted to.

[It's an out. If they want it. But if this is the unspoken tension breaking, then damn it, Church, stop resisting it and ride the wave.]

Yeah. After that.

[He's trying not to wilt, which is proving difficult, considering that this is completely and entirely his fault. All of it. The event in question, the lead up to it, the aftermath. The conversation they're currently having or, perhaps more specifically, failing to have.]

...was that a pun?

[Because he's, you know. Scratching a cat.]

What? [He doesn't see the pun right away and now just thinks that's nuts, Wash, c'mon.] If I was making a pun, it'd be funny.

...Okay if we're going to have a conversation with a capital C, let's. Just. Let's get it over with, I guess. Lay it on me. Ripping off a band aid, right?

[Ripping of a bandaid. All right.]

[Deep breath, like a swimmer about to take a plunge, and then he just - goes for it.]

After the E.M.P., Caboose didn't turn Epsilon in. He woke him up and fed him stories until he remembered who he was. Which was...you, in a sense. You, and your memories.

[The thing about bandaids is they're there for a reason, that reason being to cover a wound and help it heal. But you don't put a bandaid on a gushing laceration. You put it on a papercut or something.

If Wash wanted Church's sudden undivided attention, he's got it.]

What does that mean?

[Putting Caboose in charge of anything was never going to go right, but surely the Reds would've been able to cobble together half of a brain cell to o something like they were supposed to.]

Wh--di--what does that mean, Epsilon woke up and remembered he was me?

I mean he remembered who he was. And who he was just - he had all your memories. So he's you, before you were...before you forgot who you were.

[Wash suspects, though he wouldn't want to test this theory directly, that having a knife slowly inserted in between his third and fourth lumbar vertebrae would be marginally less painful than the effort of trying to maintain this conversation and look at Church and not succumb to the urge to bolt.]

You mean... [Isn't it amazing how a robot voice can simulate the sound of the tension of grit teeth?] It thinks it's Alpha. It--

[Everything feels like it's tilted sideways for a very sudden and sharp moment. Epsilon was the memory, it's how Wash knew, you knew all along, because the Alpha stripped its own memories of torture and torment and insanity to stay sane. Just plucked it out and tossed it aside. Memory is the key.

Ami is very concerned, but Church manages to get out from under her, scrambling to his feet. No, not scrambling. That sounds bad. Very calmly and gently rising to his feet. Sounds better. Less true, sounds better. Still, there is a tigerlily leaning heavily against his legs. He barely registers it.]

Caboose turned on the fucking tin can that thinks it's Alpha and, what, it started screaming bloody murder and self-destructed? After everything you said went on in your mess of a head--that's what happened, right?

He doesn't think he's Alpha. He just...has all your memories.

[There's a palpable spike in the tension in the room, and poor Ami is rubbing disconsolately up against Church's legs as if she can tell that he's in distress and is struggling to divert that in some sense. It doesn't look to be doing much good.]

[The armor lends Church the illusion of bulk and height that, when Wash is out of armor, instinctively locks up his shoulders and tenses his back and he'd force himself to relax if he could, but he can't.]

He woke up slower that time. He had Caboose to...walk him through it, maybe. I don't know. I wasn't there for that. I just remember that the first time I saw him since he tried to kill us both, he was implanted in this...floating alien artifact and he tried to incinerate me with a laser eye on the spot.

That's about the only thing you just said that I can actually believe. Caboose can't walk himself out of a paper bag; he can't just walk a bunch of fucked up memories in an alien can into doing anything.

Asshole probably tried to kill you because it remembered what it did in your head!

I was trying to detain him at the time, so he wasn't exactly wrong to.

[There's the other bit. The bit where Wash lived, and everything that came after.]

Look. After your buddies failed to do literally the one thing I told them to do, I took the fall for it. I waited in a UNSC cell for them to turn Epsilon in so that all of this - you, the Meta, everything - would be worth the risk.

But they didn't.

That's what we get for trusting those morons to do anything important!

[Morons he had missed being alone for fourteen months. Morons he missed even now in some fucked up way.]

[For a second, he's tempted to leave it like that. Just...let it burn off, impotent rage directed at a bunch of idiots who aren't here to feel bad about it, who aren't here to deal with the fallout of it.]

[But he doesn't. Of course he doesn't.]

Well, they woke him up. And he got a body. Like that would...replace what they'd lost.

[What Wash had taken from them.]

...

[One could imagine, perhaps, if they so wanted, Church's mouth silently repeating the word, or perhaps just opening and closing several times. His fingers feel both stiff and twitchy. How's that possible? Like he wants to curl and uncurl them but they also don't want to move.]

...Re- [It starts small and quiet and uncertain. And fuck that. Replace that, start again. Grumpier. Put some grump into it.] We didn't have any other bodies, that was a thing. [Okay. That sounds better.] Did they build another stupid robot body? I told Sarge I wanted a replacement when this thing eventually went up in smoke or actually exploded, but nooooo, 'we don't have any more robots'.

[See? See how much better this conversation is when he pushes the idea of replace aside to bitch about something inconsequential? It's much better. He knows to be angry about it but--but he's not sure where to start. Stall. Stalling.]

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