It's like trying to find the surface after being submerged under water. Your brain thinks it knows where the surface is, tries to drag its body there, but it can never manage to breach the waves, can only stare helplessly around until its sure it spies the surface again. And maybe it does, maybe the lights are boats or cities or stars and maybe the shapes are familiar or maybe they're not but you try to reach them anyway because at least it's something, something that isn't endless nothing.
But you fail. The shapes fade away and the darkness comes back and 'I'm drowning drowning drowning why won't someone help me I never learned to swim why didn't I learn to swim' is your mantra, but eventually that runs together into meaningless sound that becomes the background noise of your life.
You are The Meta, or maybe you're not, and it hurts to remember.
The Meta cocks their head, watches the gray and yellow solider with idle interest. He can't hurt them, nothing can, so they're not sure why the actions of a being so meaningless is peaking their interest, but he does.
The solider says something, marching around with the arrogance of someone that thinks their in charge but is only a pawn, a pawn that doesn't know that all of its steps are just an illusion of free will, just bullet points in a plan already set into motion.
He says something again, makes a gesture that The Meta categorizes as 'move forward' and does as the gesture suggests.
All according to plan.
They have the Medic.
This was according to plan.
Agent Maine, however, was not.
The Meta puzzles at the name, hears the different pitches of voices inside his head talking at once in a grand cornucopia of sound when he finds it lying shattered in the recesses of his mind. One voice rises high above the others, the one out of the many that Agent Maine has known far longer than the others.
Sigma speaks.
The Meta drops the name.
It burns.
The desert is a vast stretch of sand that, theoretically, does not seem like a difficult thing to conquer for a being such as The Meta.
A theory put into practice is an entirely different animal.
The sands shift, the hot wind blows the grains into minutely different patterns of golds and browns.
The sun has not set and it never will.
Nothing changes.
Nothing about the landscape, that is.
Agent Washington, as the one piece of The Meta that was not an AI has been able to recall, is not just another solider.
The Meta – not the AI, someone else that does not exist because there is no one other than The Meta – is having trouble focusing on the plan.
The AI blame it on the sand, on the unchanging atmosphere that refuses to break up the monotony that their words can not shake no matter how loudly they speak. The outside stimuli had always been helpful in keeping that one straggler away from its own thoughts, its own ideas, but without the outside distraction the one that is not an AI is left to wander, not being able to be held together, kept focused, like the AI can.
The one that does not fit is starting to remember.
The Meta watches Wash.
'He used to whistle.'
'That was a useless and unproductive thought.'
'He doesn't whistle anymore.'
Looking out across the desert is not unlike looking up towards the surface in pool of water. The desert creates shapes, waves of images not unlike the blurred picture of things that may be human when trying to find someone to save you from drowning. The image moves, the heat rolls off the sand, and it either stays or fades away.
Wash doesn't leave.
-
You watch as Wash trips over a piece of armor hidden in a sand dune, catches himself before he falls, and tries to act like nothing happened while ordering you to keep moving, to keep dragging the deadweight of the Medic trapped in concrete behind you.
You find the mental image of Wash on a skateboard, rolling far too fast around the bend of a corridor of some sort of ship, only to run a wheel over the tip of a purple boot.
He crashes into some crates with an angry female voice charging towards him.
You don't know where that thought came from.
You lean against the ruins of some ancient Sangheili temple, keeping watch over the prisoner that likely wasn't escaping his concrete prison unless his strength increased exponentially in the few hours before he woke up Wash to continue their plan.
You look down at Wash sitting in the sand, head slumped back against the wall, and have the strange thought that there should be a cat in his lap.
He doesn't immediately wake, body tensed and hand on his gun when you make the equivalent of a throat clearing noise beside him.
You leave a few hours behind schedule.
Wash had a rubber duck.
The Mother of Invention didn't even have bathtubs.
Froot Loops, not Cheerios.
No Poker face, but a grinning little shit at Uno.
He loved fruit, but hated cherries.
A short woman in brown got him a silly straw when he spilled water all over his armor.
-
He bit his lip when he was focused.
He now has a scar through his lip from a 'crashy' landing.
'Crashy' is not a word, yet somehow it felt right.
He didn't want to end up like Georgia (who ever that was).
He admired the woman in cyan.
He used to laugh more.
He dyed his hair blonde when it had originally been a black that matched his eyes. No one could tell that his eyes were just a really, really dark brown unless they got really close to him.
You wonder why you know this.
He had a scar across his nose that had nothing to do with Project Freelancer.
He had a tattoo on his shoulder. It got maimed by a bullet.
He was lost for two days once. The Director had him declared KIA.
You didn't like that.
That was the most you ever spoke in one sitting.
Your hand fits over a birthmark on his hip.
His head tucks neatly under your chin.
He let you call him David.
He made you moan it.
Wash used to have an AI, he had the scars to prove it.
He had been lost in a sea of medics and blood.
You didn't visit.
The Meta continues with the plan, Agent Maine is trapped in a world made of lines of code.
The desert is replaced with snow.
The AI cannot keep your memories from you.
Everything burns.
You won't forget.
Your name was Maine.
His name was David, then Agent Washington, then Wash. He was more than a solider – was more than a friend – and now you remember:
You remember you loved him as you pull the trigger.