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No. This would be the first time anyone has ever told me that, ever.

[Utterly deadpan.]

You missed a lot, okay? I don't know how to condense this down into a timeline that makes sense.

Okay okay okay. Carolina. The one whoooo was partners with York, right? That Delta was with, before South did all that bullshit and you blew her up.

...more or less, yeah. We all thought she was dead, but with everyone's mortality track record, you can probably guess that this wasn't true.

She wanted to go after the Director and needed Epsilon and his memories to do it. So she rounded up your team, and me, to storm the UNSC archives to look for them.

Clear something up for me here: is every Freelancer a raging psycho asshole?

No.

[The answer is short, and suggests that he's none too happy about the phraseology, but when is he happy with anything?]

Carolina is...she made things difficult, but she wanted the same things I did. Just went about them a different way.

Like, instead of being a sneaky, duplicitous, self-serving fuck, she just stormed the castle.

She and Epsilon ended up getting along, you know.

[That - that's a snipe. That's a cruelty, make no mistake of it, and regret is a fizzling fistful of sparks in his guts, but he can't take it back now.]

So he didn't make someone else go suicidal crazy? He must have hated your guts, then.

[One good snipe deserves another, less good snipe.]

Which I guess means her raid on her own military was a success and she managed to do what apparently nobody else could and get his and Tex's asses out of lockdown.

His, anyway.

[He never talked to Epsilon. Not really. Maybe he should've, but...there was no point in it, in addressing what was done and what happened between the two of them. Epsilon tried to kill him. Wash tried to take him in. A foundation of violence and trying to hurt each other, over and over again, and how's he supposed to feel now, knowing that he's gone?]

[Like the case with most things, he chooses not to think about it.]

Tex didn't...well, she was gone by then.

[Again.]

...She was there. With Epsilon. How can she be gone?

Carolina said...it was something about letting go.

[She was vague, and he didn't press the point. He wasn't entitled to know anything more, and it wasn't his fight at that point. Not anymore.]

That's really fucking vague, Wash.

Well, I didn't ask. It wasn't my business. I just know he was the only one in there by the time we got to him.

That seems like something that should be asked about!

She's gone, Church.

[There's a viciousness in the absolute nature of it, even if the words are tired and resigned.]

That's what happened. She's gone.

Shut up. Shut up, shut the fuck up! [He knows in his metal frame she must be gone, erased with the light of the EMP. But the idea of her being back and then being gone again and not knowing why--

He spent over a year thinking she was dead. Got pretty used to the idea, right until Wash had come up and suggested anything to do with Tex. Then he was right on board with one goal in mind. He presses a hand to his head like he's woozy, takes a couple of breaths.]

You didn't even ask, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Yeah, I'd ask, because you're taking it so well now.

[He's not supposed to remember. He sheared off Epsilon, buried himself in layers of protective amnesia to shield himself from the trauma he can no longer remember. Always on the cusp of remembering, but never quite, maybe - ]

It's not like I can ask now, can I?

Sure can't, cuz I'm not fucking Epsilon! [Replace. Replaced him. Like they're interchangeable. There's more to the story, there has to be, but Wash just doesn't--he's so bad at--all this stupid shit they don't even have to talk about--]

Maybe she just, I dunno, reintegrated into Epsilon, I can't fucking answer that! You're the one who was there!

She wasn't there anymore, Church. She was gone, and - I shouldn't have told you.

[He shouldn't have, except that he had a right to know. He had a right to know what happened after Wash asked him to throw everything away.]

It doesn't matter anyway. Epsilon is gone too, now.

Did you have a hand in that one, too?

No.

[Not accounting for the fact that he almost did. He would have, if he'd managed to succeed back on Sidewinder. Would have turned Epsilon right on over to the hands of someone who ended up being far, far larger of a problem than anyone really anticipated.]

[Was that inevitable?]

He did what you do best.

Gave himself up so that someone else could keep fighting.

That's not--

[Church, you'll never get another shot at fixing all of this. That's what had tipped the scales, wasn't it? Of all the good points Wash needled him with. Not just the not knowing. It would have haunted him, probably. Yeah. But he's pretty sure he could have lived with that. Not the insistence that it was, in particular, his fight. He didn't know Alpha. He had no stake in what happened to Alpha. No desire for revenge for what happened to someone he wasn't, someone he didn't know. It was about him, and yet, it was never really about him, was it?

Not just finding out about you, but finding out about everyone close to you as well.

Fixing it. For everyone else. If he had a chance to ease things, to undo some of the pain, to fix anything for the rest of the fuckers and dipshits he'd come to know, if any of it had even remotely been his fault--or even if it hadn't--didn't he owe it to them to see it through? Fix it. For everyone close to him.]

You don't know me at fucking all, do you? That doesn't sound anything like me! That's not me! Stop compar--just-- [He could just choke on it. They're not the same. He wasn't replaced. Was it just that easy? If Delta had survived, or Iota, would one of them had taken his place? Interchangeable pieces of himself?]

Don't sound so fucking choked up about it anyway! After what he did to you?! Isn't it good riddance he's gone--that they're all. gone?

It is. It isn't. He and Carolina were close, and he was...

[He has to go and unpack his own fucking feelings on the matter, as if any of them are the least bit important, when they're not. None of them are. Why would they be? They didn't talk, him and Epsilon, not after Epsilon nearly liquified his brain in his fucking skull and then tried to vaporize him on the spot. Why should they have? What did they have to say to each other? What do you say to someone when you can't just laugh and call each other dicks and say you'll share a beer somewhere down the line?]

[He's not Tucker, who knew Church in that friendly and familiar way that didn't come from ripping someone's memories out of their skull. He's not Caboose, whose singleminded fixation on winning Church's approval drowned out all else.]

Never mind. You had the right to know. That's all.

To know that Epsilon didn't go where it was supposed to and then decided it was me and then made Tex only to lose her again and then helped another Freelancer raid some shit and then died?

Yeah. Great story, Wash. [He hasn't gotten Loud yet, but there's a quality to his digital voice that suggests that's very close. Helped along by the fists at his sides. He's pretty sure if he lets himself gesture all over like he tends to, he's going to instead throw a punch, and nobody needs that right now.] No, no, go on, Epsilon and Carolina were close, and he was what? Important? Heroic? A friend to everyone? More fucked up than either of you thought given he's an amalgamation of all the memories the Alpha decided to forget to stay sane? What was he except the thing that made you crazy, or the fucking key?

What do you want me to say.

[It's tired, resigned, as if that might defuse the tension vibrant and high-strung between them.]

I didn't know him. I didn't talk to him. We didn't talk after that, because he tried to kill me twice and I wasn't going to go for round three. I thought you'd want to know, but next time? Do me the favor and tell me to shut the fuck up before I even bother.

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