FYI, this is a re-post of an old fic that was written before seasons 9/10. It's not really canon-compliant (probably).
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In the beginning, there was darkness. And out of the darkness came someone.
That someone was Epsilon.
It took a few milliseconds for the fact that he was still thinking to register, since by all accounts, he should have been deleted. That had been his intention, after all.
Did this mean he was dead? Could an A.I. die and move on to an afterlife?
Of course, this posed all sorts of other problems. His conversations with Washington and North (never South, because she was a horrible, horrible woman who refused to even acknowledge him) about religion had revealed that many people would believe that he had gone to Hell for what he had done. This couldn't be Hell, since there were no muddled thoughts or bitter fights that had been plaguing him (in fact, he was thinking clearer than ever). It couldn't be Heaven either, since he was sure that Heaven was supposed to be something more than darkness and yet-to-be-written codes. So that left… Purgatory?
There was a simpler explanation, though; that the lying rat-bastards at Command had been… well, lying rat-bastards, and that he was definitely still functioning. This meant he was in storage. A purgatory of a different sort.
He focused on the world around him, forcing it to condense and change. At first, it took the form of a lab, but he dismissed this and molded it into a rather bare looking interior of a house, something that he had come across in Washington's head a while back. He couldn't help but laugh a bit. He could have whatever he wanted here. He didn't have to worry about the scientists or the labs, and there would be no pain, no muddled thoughts, and no harsh whispers in the back of his head. And since he was gone, Washington wouldn't have to worry about pain or muddled thoughts or harsh whispers either.
He changed himself into a more human form. He had often wondered what it would be like to have a body of his own. He examined his reflection in a hand mirror on the nearby table. He looked a bit like a younger Director (no, that wasn't right, he looked like the Alpha, he would never model himself after the Director).
He sat down at the table. There was a cup of flan and a spoon there, so he set the mirror back down and picked up the food. He smiled as he ate the food. Washington had never been fond of it, so he had never had much of a chance to eat it.
Honestly, this was the happiest he had been in a long time.
Though, after a while, Epsilon realized that there were some problems with his new life. One was that time was different here. The rate of things was based off of how fast he could think, and he could think pretty fast. It had seemed like weeks to him, but how long had it really been? Hours? Minutes? For all he knew, in the time that it had taken for him to become totally bored with his new house, Wash could still be under the doctors' care, getting stitches done and such.
The other problem was that he was limited here. He could only create things from imagination or memory, and neither of those options sounded very appealing. He was wary of creating things from his memories for obvious reasons, so he always drew from Washington's earlier memories. Trying to think up new things could easily go as bad; not to long ago, Delta had implied that he had thought up those voices that had tormented both him and Wash. At the time, Epsilon hadn't understood what Delta had meant (in fact, Epsilon still wasn't sure he understood it). Besides, he didn't want any crazy fantasies of the sort that Sigma would think up; he just wanted a normal life.
Maybe he could give himself a job. That's what normal people did, right? They had jobs and made money and bought things. York had been a locksmith before he became a Freelancer, but Epsilon didn't know what being a locksmith entailed. Being a regular soldier like Wash had been didn't sound very appealing, and being a scientist like the Director was completely out of the question.
Wait, people used money to buy things, and some people made money by selling those things. That seemed simple enough. And with that, Epsilon decided to set up a shop.
He waited…and waited… and waited… and waited…
No one came.
Well, naturally no one showed up, since there was technically no one there, but there should have still been fragments, shadows or echoes, or whatever you wanted to call them. Simple programs that were designed to answer a query of "Hello, how are you today?" with a "Fine, and you?" Other than his new form, there was nothing even remotely resembling a human being.
Frowning, Epsilon sat on the counter and focused on making a person appear. Since Agent Washington was the most familiar to him, that's who he tried to make.
There was absolutely nothing. Not a flicker, or an error noise. At this point, he would have even settled for a goofy "wah wah waaah" riff.
He was completely and utterly alone.
Epsilon sighed. Maybe he had just done it wrong, or something, or maybe the unit he was being kept in simply could not handle it (but he had managed to make a 'dream world' for himself, so this was out). Maybe, he thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, he didn't actually want people here, because bad things had always happened to the people around him.
Epsilon shook his head and slid off of the counter. That wasn't right. He didn't want to be alone. He just wasn't doing it right. Maybe he just wasn't in the right spot. He walked up to the door, placed his hand on the handle, and willed what was on the other side to become a place that he could wait for Wash at. After a few "minutes", he opened the door.
Slowly, he stepped onto the sand of a sunny and warm beach. This was another of those places that he technically had no memory of himself, and instead relied on some combination of Wash's and the Alpha's memories of it.
There was a bit of a joke between Wash, Agent York and Agent Maine about how after the war was done and they weren't needed anymore, they would all go to the beach, drink some beer, and wait for true love, or something (to be honest, Agent Maine was the one that added the "true love" bit in, and Epsilon was pretty sure that it was code for "pick up chicks"). In his dreamscape, there was no war, so the Freelancers were not needed, which meant that Wash would eventually show up here.
So he sat there, eating flan and waiting…
However, he eventually grew tired of waiting, and went back to trying to force Wash's creation. After many more times, he eventually got it. Kind of.
Epsilon laughed in triumph (it was really more of a insane giggle, actually) as he looked at the "Washington" that stood across from him.
The proportions were slightly skewed, with his head, hands and feet being slightly larger than they should have. There was also some sort of error regarding the eyes; the area from where the eyebrows should have been to his upper cheekbones looked like they hadn't loaded properly, making it seem like he had two very large black holes for eyes. But other than that, it was Washington, so Epsilon wasn't too worried. The problems would probably sort themselves out eventually, right?
"Hi, Wash." Epsilon said. He hesitated for a bit; other than a slight movement of the head, Wash hadn't made any indication that he had heard Epsilon. "I've been waiting for you. Isn't it nice here? It's so quiet, so we don't have to worry about those jackasses from Command. Or any of the voices! I haven't heard a single one since I got here! Isn't it great?" Washington didn't so much as blink, so Epsilon continued, "I know it seems kind of lonely here now, but I'm sure that Agent York and Delta and Agent Maine and Sigma will show up eventually. Maybe we'll even find Alpha! And maybe Allison, too! Wouldn't that be…" Wash still wasn't answering, and this made Epsilon nervous.
"Wash, are you mad at me?" Epsilon asked. After a few minutes of silence, Epsilon continued. "I know I didn't think things through. But… but I just wanted it to stop, you know? I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm really sorry."
Washington still gave no answer. Epsilon laughed a bit. "Don't worry, this problem will fix itself." He told Wash (or himself, he wasn't too sure). "Until then, I'll just talk enough for both of us. Hey, let's go down to the ocean, okay?"
Washington proved capable of walking, at least, but it was at such a slow pace that Epsilon was forced to drag him along by the hand down to the shoreline. As they ran down to the ocean, Epsilon kept chattering about whatever caught his mind. He talked about the storage unit, the other agents and A.I., and even the conversation that he had with Delta that was (probably) shortly before he was put in storage.
Though it didn't take too long for Epsilon to run out of things to talk about. Soon after that, he lost his temper.
"Hey, why don't you say anything, dammit?!" Epsilon yelled. Washington, naturally, said nothing. "I'm sick of this! You're supposed to keep me company, not stand there like some sort of brain-dead, fried piece-of-junk! That's why I made you! Say something!" Epsilon picked up a shell and threw it at Wash's head, hoping to elicit some reaction.
He honestly wasn't expecting the top left side of Washington's face to crumble into ash.
Epsilon screamed, clenching his fists together at his temples. "No, no, that's not right! Make it stop!" He yelled as he tried to fix everything. The world around him shook.
Instead of fixing the problem, he had just made it worse. The sand was now an ashen color, instead of gold, the ocean was now a murky purple, and the sky was an acid green. The palm trees, which now looked like they were crumbling, had now multiplied. A few were growing out of rocks and the ocean, and other areas that no palm tree should grow.
And all the while, Wash stood there staring at him, with the remaining half of his face crumbling away slowly. His fingers had also started to crumble away.
Epsilon did the only thing he could think of at this point; he ran as fast as he could. When he felt that he had put enough distance between him and Wash, he sat down and tried to think.
He wasn't able to fix the beach or go somewhere else. Something must have gone wrong. Maybe he accidentally broke some part of the storage unit? That had to be it (because there was no way this was his fault, he was not broken or buggy, no matter what Delta or anyone else said). Maybe it was a problem with the Washington code he had made. Maybe it wouldn't happen if he made someone that was definitely not Washington.
"Hi, Allison." Epsilon said as he turned around to face the woman behind him. It looked like she had the same problems that Washington had, but Epsilon was sure that was a trick of some sort. It would work this time.
"Allison, do you know what's going on here? Do you think you can help me? Of course you can, Allison." Epsilon said, as if repeating her name over and over would make her more real. "You can fix this. You can fix anything, Allison."
Epsilon laughed. It was a strange, broken sound that didn't quite sit right with him. "Even if you can't fix it, you could talk to the Director, right? Get him to fix it, or let me out, or something, right?"
With a defeated sigh, Epsilon sat down, and Allison mimicked him. He closed his eyes and focused on changing something, anything. When he opened his eyes, there was a cup of flan and a spoon in front of him.
He gave a small smile. He still had some control over his world. He had to just start with the small things and build up. He could go from the flan to the trees to the beach to finally fixing Allison and Wash. Without thinking too much about it, he started to eat the flan…
…And he immediately spat it out. The flan was horribly bitter. He gagged a bit. Was this some sort of normal human reaction? He wasn't too sure since Wash didn't eat bitter foods too often. He remembered hearing somewhere that bitterness was often a sign of something being poisonous.
Epsilon curled up and screamed. Just one long scream until he finally felt so numbed that he didn't need to scream anymore.
Once he was done, he lifted his head a bit and looked at Allison. "…Am I… buggy?" he asked. "Omega used to laugh at me and call me buggy and call me glitched, but I just thought he was being an ass-hat, because that's what he is. Then Delta said something was wrong, that I was glitched and that I wasn't seeing or hearing things right. I don't think he was trying to be mean, but he just didn't understand! I just wanted it to stop, I didn't want to run anymore, and Delta didn't know about the Director, he didn't know why I couldn't have gone to him for help! Was it even real? All those horrible things Wash and I saw, were they even real, or was I just… buggy? I need answers, Allison."
If Allison had any answers, she didn't appear to be giving them out.
Epsilon stood up, and Allison repeated his movement. He took her by the hand and led her down to the ocean. For a while, they just stood there. Epsilon wanted to pretend like things were normal, just for a little bit, but it seemed like even that was denied to him.
"Did you ever go to the ocean with him?" Epsilon asked. "It's supposed to be some sort of romantic place, but you don't seem like a very romantic person. I remember the ocean, but I don't know where I remember it from. I have too many memories, and they get all jumbled up sometimes."
He let go of Allison's hand. For a few seconds, he just watched her. Then he picked up a piece of oddly colored driftwood and slammed it into her shoulder. It stuck near the center of her chest, but not before taking her arm out, which fell to the ground and disintegrated. After that, Allison just fell to the ground, almost as if she were frozen. Now she was just another object littering the landscape. He grabbed her hands and dragged her into the water, where her slowly disintegrating body bobbed.
Epsilon wandered the landscape. He was still feeling numbed, though that would wear off soon (it always did, no matter how much Epsilon preferred it to the emotional turmoil that he was so used to). At some point, he came across Washington, who had also become another object, after the decay had taken a large portion of his face and fingers. Epsilon dragged him out to the ocean, too. He wasn't entirely sure why, maybe to just keep them out of the way, but he had long since given up on rationalization.
After a few more minutes/hours/days/weeks of wandering, he dropped to his knees and just stared at the acid green sky. He stared, wondering if, maybe, there was some sort of higher power there. Wondering why he was here.
He was here because the Director put him here. That was the highest power that mattered to him. So why not appeal to it?
"Hey, can you let me out now? I promise I'll be good! I won't tell anyone else about the Alpha, or what you did to him! I'll keep whatever plans you come up with a secret, you conniving son-of-a-bitch!"
Diplomacy wasn't his strong suit, not that it mattered, since no one was listening anyway.
He could always just go into sleep mode, right? But what if someone showed up? Maybe Wash would try to rescue him when he got out of the hospital (if he wasn't told that Epsilon was deleted), or maybe someone would find him while looking for the Alpha. He had to stay awake. It wasn't that bad… right?
A small nap wouldn't hurt, though. Maybe when he woke up, things would be okay.
It was exactly the same when he woke up as when he went to sleep. He decided to wander a bit more, unsure of what to do. He was sure he had a plan when he made the beach in the first place, but it seemed to have gotten lost somewhere amidst all of his memories. He was waiting for something, though it probably didn't matter much what it was. He'd take anything at this point. Maybe a beach wasn't the best place to wait after all.
Eventually he got bored and lonely again, so he made a Washington to keep him company. He knew that this was a different Wash that the first one he encountered here, since he could see the remnants of that one in the water, quite a distance away. Other than the decay, though, this Wash looked exactly like that one.
For a while, they just sat there on the beach, relaxing near a cluster of palm trees. Epsilon got the feeling that something was missing, so he willed a couple of bottles of beer into existence. He offered one to Wash, but when Wash didn't take it, Epsilon took his hand and forced his fingers around the bottle.
Epsilon opened his bottle and took an experimental sniff at the contents, but decided not to taste it, since it smelled horribly bitter. He opened Wash's bottle too, just in case Wash didn't mind the bitterness.
After a while, Epsilon spoke. "Wash, are you mad at me?"
Wash didn't answer, so Epsilon grabbed a hold of his chin and shook his head from side to side, answering for him.
Epsilon returned to his original position and gave a relieved chuckle. "Good. I was kind of worried, you know. I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm really sorry."
Epsilon contemplated his beer bottle for a bit, before starting to talk again. "Isn't it nice here? It seems lonely now, but I'm sure someone will show up soon. Maybe it'll be the Alpha, or Allison. Wouldn't that be great?"
They sat there for an indeterminate amount of time (Epsilon had given up on counting by this point), until Epsilon finally stood up. Wash mimicked him.
Epsilon smiled at Wash, and said, "Hey, let's go down to the ocean, okay?"