Notes: Cross posted from A03, has typical amounts of violence and language that you'd find in the show regardless, and will be formatted a bit differently but still read the same.
[Arc 1]: After responding to a transmission from the Blue Team stationed on a planet called Oracle, Tex and Church find themselves trapped with a colorful assortment of dimwitted sim-troopers. The situation only escalates when other Freelancers show up with plans to kill the Alpha (and in this case, each other), and with the AIs still scattered across the universe, Church is beginning to lose control of himself.
Good luck, agent Texas, because you're going to need a lot of it.
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If he used to think he doesn't now, staring absently seems to suit him just fine. Something within him wonders instinctively if he could calculate the approximate size of this room, if he could find something to occupy his hands, if he should call for the Director and ask about all that previous banging from somewhere outside the confines of this space.
Or…was he thinking about something? He isn't sure. If he used to think, he certainly doesn't now, staring absently suits him perfectly fine. Something within him though wonders instinctively, like some kind of basic programming, if he could calculate the approximate size of this room, if he could find something to occupy his idle hands, if he should call for the Director and ask about…the banging, that's right, from somewhere outside. He almost forgets that the banging happened, at some point.
And…was he thinking about something? Well, if he used to think he doesn't now –
"Hey there."
He registers the familiarity of the voice but the name doesn't come to him yet. Doesn't come to him at all, for that matter. Instead he faces the being poised several paces away. Obsidian armor and an almost offstandish nature, like she's capable of destruction and maybe she has, at some point, destroyed something. A life, a past, a future. And still, even still, she offers him comfort in her presence. "Oh, uh, hello," he chirps, remembering suddenly how to speak. "I haven't had any visitors since…uh…hello! My name's…uh…Wow, I'm not making a very good first impression. I'm sorry."
"I know who you are," she responds gently. "You're Alpha, you're Church."
"Right, right! That's it. I'm Alpha." He pauses. "And who are you?"
"You don't remember me?"
She sounds genuinely baffled. He stumbles, presses his hands awkwardly together. "I'm sorry I'm just – I'm really tired. Who are you again?"
"I'm Tex; I'm Beta." She gives him a moment to recollect the memories that don't return. "I'm Allison. Don't you remember me?"
"Uh…no, I don't think we've ever met."
"We have."
"Oh," he mutters, dropping his arms to his sides. "Sorry, I'm just really tired."
She approaches him with steady, sure strides and her palms clasp either side of his helmet to keep his gaze fixated on her. He doesn't want to look anywhere else in all honestly, captivated by her mysterious allure and her familiarity and her. "Alpha – Church, I need you to come with me, okay? I need you to leave this place with me before it's too late."
"Nah, I'm…too tired, I just want to rest. Thanks though. For the offer. Uh, Tex, thanks Tex."
"You don't want to come with me?"
"I do. I just don't think I can, you know? I don't know why I can't, but I just…I'm trapped, I think. I dunno. I think I'm waiting for someone. Thanks for the offer though, but I'm really tired."
Her touch recedes as she steps away from him. "Then I'm gonna go, okay?"
"Oh no, no no!" He reaches out like he's dropped an expensive glass piece, desperately grabs her hands. "Don't do that, don't…uh, don't say goodbye. Please. I don't know why but I just – I don't like goodbyes."
"But you want to stay here."
"Do I? I'm sorry, I'm just tired." His grasp tightens, not hard but still so desperate. "You can stay with me if you'd like."
"I can't do that, I'm sorry."
"But I'd hate to say goodbye."
She slides her hands out of his, shakes her head a firm 'no' when he makes a move to get close again. "Why don't you rest?"
"No thank you, not right now. I'm waiting for…I forgot who I'm waiting for, and I don't remember why I'm even waiting. I guess it doesn't matter then." He chuckles to himself, yawns. "Hey, if I go with you, will I get to lie down a bit? I'm sorry, I'm just really tired."
"Yes, you can rest all you'd like."
"Really? Take me with you then, wherever you're going, I'm sure…someone important won't mind. Someone I'm forgetting. I don't remember who the important person is right now."
"Okay." He can hear the smile in her voice. Renewed and thrilled and it makes him just as happy. "I'm gonna go now, just for a moment. There's something I have to do. But when I get back I'm taking you with me."
"I'd like that. I like you. What's your name again?"
"Tex."
"Right. Okay. Tex." His world is ebbing, shaking, shattering, and he doesn't even notice because all he can focus on is her. "I'll see you soon!"
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Prologue
Part I: Memories
{Church & Tex}
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She barely escapes the wreckage with him, let alone in one piece, and is thankful that it starts snowing. The Meta won't find her in this weather. She safely ducks into a mountainside cavern that is scattered with miscellaneous animal bones, probably a den for a foreign predator that will serve them well enough for tonight, presses deep into the core and keeps her hand situated firmly around his. He's not quite awake, is nothing more than an empty shell struggling to operate in its new body.
But he listens to her, for what it's worth. "Here," she mutters, helping him sit back against the frigid wall, "we'll stay here until tomorrow, okay?"
"Oh, okay…Who are you again?"
"Tex," she responds gently. "I'm Allison, remember?"
"Tex? Oh, right, right." He's still acting like a machine, a broken, hollowed computer program, but he recognizes the warmth of her body settling beside him and leans into her, his head tucked into the crevice of her neck. Hugs her close by her waist. She doesn't find the strength to push him away and lets her arms press pliantly to his back. "It hurts," he says, "I'm tired."
"What hurts?"
"I don't know. I'm tired."
"Ssh," she ushers gently, the whisper imitating a soothing stimulation that lulls him in her arms. "Just sleep."
He does. And he doesn't ever let her go.
He awakens the first day like a reborn child, a slate scrubbed clean with months of bleach and nails and misery. Doesn't recall much about himself, nor when questioned, seems to understand the gravity of their situation. He's unaware of their location, where he's from; responds placidly to her comments and her concerns. He acts as if project Freelancer was a training regimen he had been a part of as a supervisor of sorts, recalls all of the agents by assigned codename. Almost makes it sound like he personally knows each and every one of them on an intricate level.
Yet oddly enough the terms Delta, Theta, Omega, AI unit – they mean nothing to him.
And for a while he just follows her, barely recognizes commands, seems to simply copy her movements as they trudge across the frosty tundra towards an unknown destination, anywhere is better than the downed Mother of Invention, really.
At first he's incoherent, but once he adapts to consciousness, his voice stops spilling out in stuttering fragments. Comes in short sentences. By the time nightfall has descended to swallow the gorge of the valley they've taken refuge in another cavern, which is thankfully warm enough to drip with fresh water, and he's sitting by her side drinking carefully out of his canister. He huddles up against her, has his eyes on her while she watches the snow.
"You're Tex. We're together, right?"
"That's right," she says. "And you're Church."
"Right, right." He hesitates. The snow falls. "Why do they call you Tex?"
"You gave me that name."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because I'm from Texas."
"Oh. That's kind of dumb of me, you deserve a prettier name." He tilts his head to her laugh, seems to register it as a foreign sound. He caps the thermos, lays down with his head on her lap, recognizes that she's running her fingertips wearily over the intricate details in his alabaster armor. "I'm tired. I want to sleep now."
"Okay."
"Will you be here when I wake up?"
"Of course."
He takes her other hand, crosses it over his chest, and holds on to her gently as he rests. This is so fucked up she nearly storms back to the crashed ship to kill the Director himself with his own skull. But she needs to stay with him, has to stabilize the Alpha. She knows the memories might return.
But for today, he sleeps.
He's broken off most of what he can to cope with the trauma, yet fragments of his fragments still linger behind. The deceit, the anger, the fear and the despair, ambition and innocence and comprehension. It defines him yet defies him as a personality that's been scraped together by desperate finger nails and overlapping algorithms. And that's why she's so goddamn thrilled that his memories haven't stuck around; he won't have to remember all the abhorrent experiments, the pain of dragging a human body through miles of shattered glass and gorges of mental mutilation and horrification.
Except he's not human, never was. And an artificial body ruled by an artificial mind can't, won't, and will never change that.
He lies about being hungry so she won't waste rations, gets irrationally agitated with his shitty aim, is terrified of falling asleep and finds comfort in her embrace. Asks her to help him shoot the sniper rifle they pick up when she runs a quick job for a shady company, loves to listen to her stories and encourages her to share one almost every night, seems to agree with a lot of the most complex plans she can elaborate on. He is Delta, Sigma, Theta, Gamma, Omega, Eta & Iota, pieces that have never truly left him during the divergence process.
In a way, he behaves like he possesses a real soul. And it's helping him become more and more coherent as the weeks progress.
She wonders if he knows that she's a shadow too, if the past he barely recognizes ever reminds him of the Director. If he can recollect the history of the very man he was modeled after. If he's aware that he might not love a woman for who she is but rather who she used to be.
And she supposes she should tell him the truth.
The monstrosity that used to be agent Maine pursues them vehemently, but most of the time, he's nothing more than a distant memory in Church's head. Because Church doesn't know that he's Alpha, that he kept all the files of the Freelancers (except for hers, smothered by lies and falsified testimonies) and that what he believes to be memories of interactions with agents are simply facts, collected and analyzed and strewn into files compiled into folders compressed into data in the back of his mind.
Identifies Meta as an ally. As the person he used to be, before succumbing to the consumption of his AI (or rather, Carolina's AI, and Tex realizes now that the "matching" process had less to do with nature and more with mental connectivity, which is perhaps why giving Sigma away so carelessly led to Carolina's ultimate downfall and the uprise of a monster that should have never been).
Maine was brave and friendly and protective, took a bullet to save agent Carolina (and it's been alluded to that her passing of Sigma was a way of returning his selfless actions) and maybe he's still agent Maine underneath it all, under the scars and the trauma and the influence of the Meta complex. But he's subsumed to the point of no return. To the point of absolute insanity.
Still Church asks her who "Meta" is, what happened to him, what happened to the "real" agent Maine.
Never gets an answer.
The memories are gone but the pain remains.
He wakes up most nights screaming, plagued by dreams that operate in cycles, forcing his head underwater as he relives the torture and the rot and the agony; forgets the terrifying nightmares almost immediately when Tex's arms have enveloped him. He worries that she's beginning to find this task tedious and expects her to leave him, anticipates rolling over one morning to see an imprint in the ground where she had been lying, the spot long since curdled by the frigid air.
But she's always there, persistent and comforting and warm.
Doesn't quite understand why she's so loyal to him, when he can't remember the day they actually met. Only recollects fragments of a childhood that wasn't his, maybe a little something about a small girl with red hair. Has the strongest impressions from the day he first awoke in an unfamiliar snowy terrain.
Too much of him is broken to fully comprehend just how much is missing, but he's got her, and that can be enough for now.
For tonight's story, she tells him about the AI units and he's fascinated. She omits the fact that they were once apart of him, introduces Omega who's been dormant and inactively observing their missions for the last six months, has already made a pact with him that he is to never bring up the fact that Church is the Alpha. Omega seems to agree to it out of principle, knows that he would much rather stay with Texas instead of risk being consumed by the Meta. He's attached himself to her regardless, and personally, finds that the Alpha's subconscious influence keeps his anger at bay.
Finally the exhaustion sets in, but Church lingers in the silence.
He presses to her back, crossing an arm over her waist, seeking out warmth in the blistering cold of the night. The shadows of the canyon dance absently in the dwindling flames of their camp fire. She's already fast asleep, using his upper arm as a pillow, is no longer as uncomfortable as she used to be with getting this close to him. He stares at Omega materialized before her.
"Why can't I remember?"
"Remember what?"
He considers that sarcasm, maybe. "Anything before the crash. Do you know who I was?"
"I do."
"Wanna tell me?"
"No."
"Fuck you then."
Omega rumbles with a deep throated laughter. It's haunting, cruel, belittling. "It's not me who can help you remember."
That concludes their conversation. For now.
Most days are good, when they can bathe in rivers and stand on mountains overlooking valleys, when they occasionally run successful operations for an organization needing guns for hire and figure themselves out in serene motel rooms for the night. But some days are bad, when they have to ration out water and treat injuries with dwindling medical supplies, when a job falls through at the seams or the Meta catches up with them.
Yet no day has been as agonizing as this.
He likes to agitate her, she likes to make threats. To an extent their arguing is nothing short of typical in a healthy relationship, but it was only a matter of bait and bite before they really exploded. From a perspective, it could have been the amounting stress on Tex or the persistent distress from Church's forgotten memories that surmounted into an outburst, but neither of them were keen on admitting to blame. Not while battered and bruised from the events of a struggle with Wyoming almost gone wrong.
"I told you to leave it alone!"
"I was just trying to help!"
"Jesus Church, how can I expect you to help me when you're so desperately looking to me to save your own skin? What, you suddenly have abandonment issues? Can't handle being left in the play pen for more than five goddamn minutes?"
"I thought Wyoming was going to kill you!"
"And he almost killed you instead!"
"I didn't want to lose you!"
She scoffs, the underlying bitterness still present, Omega's influence increasing the intensity of her anger. "There you go, being selfish again."
"If living in the constant fear that my own weakness is going to kill the only person I love most then fine, I'm fucking selfish and you're a fucking bitch! I'm sorry I wasn't born some goddamn Adonis and I'm sorry you got stuck with me of all people"—he throws his hands up—"and if I'm such a big fucking mistake why don't you just leave?"
"Because you couldn't handle it!"
"Goddammit, Tex!" He sounds so broken and tired and exasperated, but her tension amounts further until she's beyond understanding, beyond feeling remorse. "You know what? Fuck it, then I'll leave."
"Fine."
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
The following lapse of silence is almost deafening. She anticipates his next snappy remarks, glaring at him intently as he gyrates to gaze off into the distance, into a sunrise silhouetted inanimately against the sky. "Maybe you're right," he says suddenly, doesn't raise his voice or sound genuinely angry at all. "You're better off without me. At least this way I know that you won't get killed."
He tromps off into the forest, disappears around the flat of a rising plateau.
Omega thinks he could use this opportunity to provoke Tex further, maybe get them elsewhere and leave the Alpha far behind where he will never risk merging into the supreme being again, but he almost sympathizes with her sudden guilt and chooses to remain quiet.
Tex broils in anger for what feels like hours (and it could have been hours, time lacks meaning when she's consumed in blinding apathy) before she finally treks after him, following the trail of bullet holes in trees and broken sticks scattered along the ground. Finds him sitting on a fallen log, basking in the ambient sunlight streaming through the canopy, his helmet discarded in a patch of moss.
"You love me," she begins hesitantly, referring to his slip during the heated exchange.
"I hate fighting with you."
He isn't looking at her as he speaks. She sets her rifle against the broken roots of the tree, moves over to stand off to his side, her hands gently clasp either side of his face. His beard is a bristled shadow, eclipsing the heavy ache in his eyes. "I know," is all she replies with, stroking the arch of his cheek.
"I don't need saving. I just don't want to be saved if I'm not going to be with you."
She leans forward to kiss him. They've never kissed. He's been perfectly content in her presence, in huddling with her in the cold nights or pressing to her back on particularly restless evenings, but he's resigned any excessive contact to nothing more than keeping his distance. Still, the kissing doesn't surprise him. For a reason he can't quite explain, it feels almost natural. Like they've done this before.
They don't fight much after that.
They're starving for several days when their money runs out and Tex taps into a radio tower off a northern shore to access any calls involving outpost soldiers seeking Freelancers or rogue agents for hire. A transmission comes through, requesting a prompt reply to a call on another planet. She recognizes it as a long forgotten outpost set up by Project Freelancer to make a simulation scenario for intense training, but it's most likely been repossessed by the U.N.S.C and left open for other training operations.
She takes her chances, responds to the call.
"A ship's coming tomorrow morning," she tells him as he pops open their last rationed protein bar and offers her half (to be honest, it's more than half, but she knows saying anything about it will just irk his irritation). She accepts it, just to keep him from worrying.
"Where to?"
"Oracle."
"Pay's good?"
"Enough to get us out of there without staying too long."
Church seems exasperated by the prospect of jumping onto yet another mission. They're always moving. Have been for the past few years, attempting to avoid Meta and the misplaced shadows on the walls. Scouring the planets, sometimes sneaking onboard ships and exploring other solar systems, blending into the crew with relative ease.
"Okay," he says reluctantly, "whatever you want."
She just wants him safe.
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Part II: Aftermath
{Washington}
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They hire him to do a simple job – to track down agent New York, and the twins North and South Dakota, and to recover their AIs before the Meta can get ahold of them. They let him keep his AI as part of the payment, although he doesn't activate it, is too scared of having his mind ripped apart so violently at the seams again. But regardless, he thinks he owes them, for helping him through the trauma. For keeping him alive and redirecting the gun away from his forehead on his worst days. For offering him ways of coping and progressing back into a coherent human being.
But he finds this simple job to be…complex, when he gazes through a sniper rifle scope and locates the woman in pink armor keeping close to her brother's side, her head snapping around to study her surroundings.
Maybe they never were a thing, at all, between the scarce jokes after rough missions and the time she kissed him while drunk and the one, single, time they banged each other senseless in his bedroom (to let off steam, to let out frustration, to quickly forget it ever happened).
Maybe they could have been a thing, to some established degree, dodging around the subject with quick feet and avoiding the regulations of their job and pretending that there was never any unresolved tension between them.
Maybe they would have been a thing, possibly, assuming he hadn't suffered from a complete and utter breakdown and the Director's best agent hadn't crashed an entire fucking ship into a tundra and if, maybe if, she had chosen to stay instead of abandoning them altogether with her brother. The twins are inseparable even when she pushes him away and Wash thinks that she's safer with North anyway. He couldn't protect her, not in his current state (assuming that she would allow him the courtesy to be her self-assigned partner, but getting closer to her might only prove fatal in the end).
Maybe if they had been a thing, at all, this would have been harder. So he doesn't court his luck and sends a transmission to command, now in control of what remains of Project Freelancer, the Director in hiding somewhere underground. No surprise to him, of course. CT has warned him about the aftermath of the crash and burn. CT's dead now and he doesn't give a fuck what she thinks.
He receives the call. A go-ahead. Keep pace and don't lose them.
Command hires Washington to track down the agents.
The Director hires Wyoming to kill them.
No one anticipates Maine to get there first.
North Dakota isn't shot, he's gutted by Maine's blade right in front of his sister and South takes Theta as she escapes. Wash arrives too late, just in time to find North's frigid, bloated corpse, but Meta's long gone and York's probably with her and Wyoming is already there, standing off to the side, chuckling to himself even though his tone lacks any amusement.
"It seems nothing is working out in either of our favors, ey chap?"
Wash supposes this hurts, watches Wyoming raise a rifle from the corner of his eye. "I guess not."
"I should kill you and get a bonus from the Director."
"Yeah, probably."
Wyoming hesitates, lowers his rifle to his side. Wash's attention is fixated on the body, already set with rigor mortis. He's going to have to blow it to pieces before the Meta returns to take what's left. "It's a real shame how things turned out," Wyoming says now, his voice much softer than before, almost distant. "I wonder how your friend agent South is handling that new voice in her head."
"Hopefully better than I did."
Wyoming firmly pats Wash's shoulder as he goes. "Terribly sorry about that, David. Make sure when you do find your friend, that you can pull the trigger. For her sake."
Wash waits until Wyoming is long gone before he sets up the explosives and detonates North's body, doesn't find much use in eulogies or prayers. Takes him apart. Leaves nothing of value, nothing of coherent worth. Pretends it's South so maybe he really won't hesitate the next time he sees her through his scope.
The next time he hears from Wyoming it's a status update: that Meta's killed him and taken Gamma, that Texas and Alpha had been reported in the same area at the time but were almost completely irrelevantly involved; Wyoming was simply there to kill Tex, Maine was simply there to kill Wyoming.
Wash supposes that hurts a bit too.
It takes six months for him to catch wind of the rogue agents again, not that it matters anymore, because York is already dead and Delta is now with South and the Meta is still after her and Wash is tired. He's tired of receiving sickening news, of spending his days eradicating the beta lancers that weren't even directly involved with the Project's AIs – like Mississippi and Louisiana and Alaska – and he's tired of waiting for the update that South is in the same state as her brother.
Although that particular update never comes, he's tired of chasing her. She's completely alone with two incompatible AIs and Wash wonders, most days, if she's in pain.
If she thinks of him too.
If she might eat a bullet the way he had tried so many times before.
He receives an update some weeks after putting a bullet in agent Tennessee's head, and again, it isn't about South's whereabouts. Instead it's about Tex and Alpha and Wash finally breathes easy.
They're heading to planet called Oracle.
He takes the tracking frequency out of his radio com unit and smashes it, goes off the radar completely and now there's no way for Command (whoever seems to be running it) to get ahold of him. The Director doesn't need to know any more than that.
"Come on Epsilon," he remarks to his AI's pod and it murmurs in response. "We've got a job to finish."
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Part III: Decisions, Decisions
{York & South}
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The rented apartment is one bedroom one bathroom, paid in cash with whatever York and South can scrape out of their accounts, outfitted with two mattresses tossed listlessly side-by-side. They can survive here for at least six months, until the money runs out or they have to make a brisk exit once the other Freelancers catch a wind of their trail. But they can make it work and maybe they can make it work for more than a year. This place is foreign and new and that's fine for now, because maybe they'll survive this in the end.
Maybe is not a definite but it's all they have left.
The cold seeps into the crevices of the darkness, the room barely illuminated by the light emanating gently from Theta and Delta. They flicker to either side of South, perched on the edge of her bed, her fingers in her hair. Her armor is strewn about the floor at her feet. Forgotten. Heavy. She doesn't care.
"You know, I almost find it laughable how we're stuck together."
York scoffs humorlessly. He's half-naked across the room as he fumbles in the dark, attempting to slide on his pants with stiff limbs still injured from the crashing of the ship (his thanks for helping Tex, apparently). "Hey, I can up and leave if you have a problem with it."
"No, I mean – think about it, the entire project fell to fucking pieces and here we are, you and me. It's just so illogically improbably it's hilarious." She sniffles, buries her face in her hands. The tears come immediately, the tears come silently.
York paces over to her and almost trips on his own armor. He kneels down at her side, settles a hand on her shoulder. She's trembling and she hasn't slept in days and now she's crumbling. He never sees her like this. It frightens him. "Hey…Hey, you're okay."
"I really fucked up this time, huh?"
"It's not your fault." He brings her head to his chest, lets her sob into his shirt. "It's not your fault… Look, North's not here anymore but I am, so we're going to get through this together, it's the least I can do. For him and for you."
She nods, presses her fingers over the implant still raw against the exposed flesh of her neck.
"It's going to be okay, South."
And for the next few years, everything almost feels okay.
Somehow, as if by some sick joke the universe plays, South lets herself open up to York and she attaches to him and she calls him friend. For a while they work, living (surviving) in a mediocre apartment above a gang-driven block of a sprawling metropolis city. She attempts to scrape up money by bargaining with the gang that meets up in the alley behind the complex, offering them weapons she steals from a U.N.S.C headquarters in trade for fast cash. York occasionally breaks into stores and warehouses and pawns off any jewelry and weapons he manages to swipe.
Somewhere along the way, South forgets that getting attached is what gets people killed.
The longest they ever go without eating is three days and York breaks into markets at night to steal them food for the week, sometimes for the month, sometimes gets caught by sector security and South manages to aid his escape. They rarely fight over it, she doesn't actually care. "We do what we need to," she tells him without meeting his gaze, so they leave it at that.
At certain points, when South looks thinner than normal, York makes sure she eats more than he does to keep the weight on, and he'll go without food altogether just for her sake (he'll even lie about having a meal to convince her to eat and maybe she knows he's bluffing). She doesn't thank him. It wouldn't make a difference.
"You should take care of yourself first and foremost," Delta says with a mild air of concern but York just shuts him off.
North would want it this way. That's all that matters now.
York collects status updates on the other Freelancers. When nothing good comes out of the recent hunt for Carolina he draws into himself for several days, barely speaking or showing interest in anything aside from pawning off a sniper rifle. South surprises him with some extra money she makes running a job for a shady company. It could be her way of thanking him, her way of holding up her half of their situation, her way of redeeming herself for outbursts and anger and fighting him more often than helping him.
It'll last them the whole month and they go out to eat for the first time in years.
Theta isn't compatible with her, even as their synch stabilizes as the days progress. He misses having a partner who would understand his childish nature, but South simply tells him, outright, about everything he questions. She's brash, but at the very least she's honest with him (not like she can lie anyway, he'd know) and he likes that about her.
His memories of North divulge into her sleep when he doesn't mean for it to happen. She dreams of watching fireworks, of skateboarding down endless roads with the summer sunset above trees, of North telling her stories in late night hours. Sometimes the dreams overlap into nightmares and she cries behind the failing panels of the shield, feels bullets ripping through her chest and the impact of missiles rocking the floor beneath her feet.
At one point, she wakes up screaming for North when she has to watch him die all over again.
York soothes her the best he can. She doesn't find comfort in touch, she finds it in words and York is so godawful at it he almost gives up entirely. Delta walks her through a breathing exercise, Theta scrambles for apologies, South thinks the voices are making it harder to focus.
"It was an accident! I didn't mean to!"
"It was only an accident. Keep breathing. Listen to my instructions."
"Just an accident, South. You're okay."
They don't get very much sleep that night. She ignores Theta most of the next day before she finally looks herself in the bathroom mirror and says to York, who's counting out their earnings for the week with Delta's assistance in the other room, "I'm so glad we weren't identical twins."
She's talking about her brother again and he isn't surprised. "Why?"
"Then I wouldn't be me. Theta would synch with me perfectly fine and it would be almost as if North never died." She raises her shoulders, as if shrugging. "That has to count for something, right? Survival bonus points?"
"South-"
"He really liked you, for whatever reason. The fucking prick."
York gazes at her, her hair still dripping from the shower, her eyes defined by light depressions from exhaustion. He thinks about too many things at once – how North and South had held hands in the womb, late afternoon lunches with North and Maine and Carolina and sometimes Wash, sparring sessions with Tex, that one time North tried to kiss him and they had to re-establish the perimeters of their friendship – things that shouldn't apply to the situation but he feels Delta latching onto the memories with intrigue.
"I know," he says finally.
She sleeps next to York that night. They don't touch, at first, keep their backs pressed together for a long while. At some point she faces him, at some point he faces her, holding her gaze with his one good eye and she traces the lightning bolt scar on the other side. At some point she mutters something along the lines of, "It doesn't have to mean anything."
"It could."
"It's not going to."
He gives her a small nod and leans in to meet her lips, his hands working up her shirt as she rolls them both over so she can take top.
For warmth, she tells herself. They didn't have enough money to pay off that part of the bill.
She lets her guard down – they let their guard down, years of hiding and barely getting by finally diverging into the norm for them, overcasting their pasts and the fact that the Meta is still out there persistently searching. They make it three years in the city, in the mediocre apartment on the gang-driven block with leagues of criminal activities under their belts just to make ends meet.
The Meta doesn't find them in the city, he finds them on the outskirts heading towards a company building that's looking to hire Freelancers or Mercenaries for a security firm.
Meta doesn't aim for York when he pulls the trigger.
But York sees him coming and the last thing South says to him before he takes the dive and the bullet hits – "If this goes well I can finally leave this stupid planet once and for all. Why don't you come with me?"
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Perhaps she's always known it would boil down to this, to being hunted by the very people she could have called friends if she hadn't been so adamant on keeping people at a distance (even her own brother but he would navigate his way back to her because he always knew when she needed support, a bucket of water to ease flames). Maybe it would be easier if York were here still, if North were here still, if nothing was so royally fucked to hell.
She's somewhere on a different planet near a simulation location called Blood Gulch. At first she considers offering her services to the teams stationed, only to find that they've been relocated to God-knows-where, and she spends a while raiding the bases for supplies. Doesn't find much ammunition but she does find plenty of rations to fill her bag.
Doesn't expect to be cornered.
"Knock knock, agent South."
She sneers, raises her gun to the darkness around her as the halls of the empty base echo with the familiar voice. "Who's there?"
"You know."
"You know who?"
Wyoming's rifle presses against the depression of her spine. "You know exactly who."
South grits her teeth, raises her hands slowly. "How much?"
"Clearly enough or I wouldn't be here, now would I?" He prods her back firmly. "I expected more from you, Grace. Still refusing to set your motion trackers after all these years, I see. Did your AI companions fail to alert you to my presence?"
"I shut them off."
"Tisk tisk. Rookie mistake, my dear." He presses into her blades with more persistence and she almost stops breathing. "Speaking of AIs, I'll be taking yours now."
A bullet rockets between them and explodes against the far wall. South dives forward to dodge under Wyoming's panicked shots, makes a sprint for the ramp as a blur darts across the adjacent corridor. "It's Meta!" she exclaims, activating Theta just in time for him to reflexively throw up a panel of her shield and deflect the Meta's blade from behind.
She sprints up into the daylight, launches off the edge of the roof. Bullets are fired in her wake but Theta calculates the trajectory with ease and fends off each blow with segments of the shield. She lands in a tuck and rolls up to her feet, breaking into a sprint for the Blue base with a mongoose parked out near a broken down tank.
She jumps on the vehicle and speeds off, rounding around the edge of the canyon as she rides the strip of rising plateau out of that place. Notices that Wyoming is fleeing towards his motorcycle with the Meta in hot pursuit.
It's the last time she sees Wyoming. She knows it won't be the last she'll see of Maine.
"I have received official word from agent Washington. Agent New York and agent North Dakota are dead, agent Texas has gone off the map, and agent South Dakota is still on the run. Our attempt at retrieving the AI units has proven futile now that agent Wyoming has been killed by the Meta."
South Dakota tunes in to the radio transmission through her modified head set as the Counselor speaks, relaying his information to the body at the receiving end of the line.
"I want a full summary, Counselor."
"Agent Maine has killed North Dakota, Wyoming, and York, but he has only managed to claim Gamma. Agent Washington has taken care of agents Louisiana and Tennessee."
"And what of units Theta and Delta?"
"Delta and Theta are believed to be in South Dakota's possession now. Initially it was assumed, after North's death, that she had taken control of the Theta unit, and given that her last location was with agent York, she might be in control of Delta as well. Two incompatible AIs may prove too much–"
"And my daughter. What of my daughter, Counselor? Please tell me you have something other than bad news."
"There are no updates on the status of agent Carolina, sir."
"I see. I will continue to search for her, then. You keep looking for agent South Dakota. I don't care what you have to do to get rid of her, hire Florida if it comes down to it. And if we're lucky, Delta and Theta will drive her to the brink of suicide and save me the trouble altogether."
"Of course, sir."
South leans her head into her arms and screams. Theta and Delta offer no comfort. It wouldn't do her any good.
"Agent Washington has gone rogue. He knew about our plan all along."
"I figured as much."
"But you still felt the need to allow him to keep Epsilon?"
"Epsilon is safer with him. I only care about Alpha and Carolina."
South Dakota shuts off the transmission. How many of them need to die before this comes to an end? How many more nights does she have to spend with her pistol pressed to her forehead, wondering if maybe North's voice will leave her memory for good, or if he'll haunt her in death? There's something sick about it. There's something alluring about the gun.
She thinks it would look better punching a bullet through the Director's brain.
"Delta, Theta."
The two AIs appear in synch. They remain unusually silent as if sensing her sudden resolve, uneasy and hesitant and piqued by curiosity. South pulls up a file in her helmet, the last known coordinates of agent Washington before his tracker went dead and the transmission update she hacked into about a Freelancer being hired at a simulation location called Oracle.
"There's only one way to put an end to this."
"Kill the Meta?" Theta offers.
"Kill the Alpha. And to find Alpha, we have to find agent Texas."
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