A/N: Just something I wanted to do. I don't think it's particularly good, seeing as it's been a long time since I last wrote fanfiction, but I think it's cute, so... review, if you wanna. Lots of swearing, because it's RvB and there's no way you can't swear a lot with RvB. Mild spoilers, if you aren't caught up to certain points of the shows. Claudia/Tex, mentioned H.G./Myka, Tex/Sister. Butchered timelines, because AU, now you can't say anything about it. Ha.

"Church. Church. Church. Church. Church. Hey, Church."

Church let out an agitated sigh and turned to Caboose. "What, Caboose?" he hissed. There was absolutely nothing that could possibly be important enough to bother him in the middle of the night.

"Something happened."

Church sighed again. "I swear to fucking Christ, Caboose, if this involves your pants…"

"Nothing happened to my pants." Caboose paused. "Yet. Something else happened. It was bright. And loud. And super-exciting. And now Tex has a new best friend."

Church shot up, still in his armor. "What? Is there another Freelancer here?"

Caboose stared at Church and let out a drawn out "Noooo…" Then he looked back up at Church. "Unless you want there to be. Then there is totally another Freelancer."

With another sigh, Church rolled out of bed and grabbed his sniper rifle. "Whatever. Where's Tex?"

"She is in the kitchen. With her new best friend. She told me to get my best friend. So I came here!" Church couldn't see Caboose's face, but he knew he had a giant, stupid grin on his face and it wasn't going anywhere.

Church trudged to the kitchen, finding Tucker just outside. "Dude," he said, "Tex and Sister are in there with some chick that just appeared out of nowhere. None of them are in their armor and I seriously think pretty soon they're gonna start… you know."

Church just slapped Tucker on the back of the head and sighed out an irritated "Shut up, Tucker" on his way into the kitchen.

"Dude," the new redhead said when Church entered, "that's seriously awesome. Do you two have armor like that?"

"Yeah," Tex said, glancing at Church. "We do."

Sister grinned. "I just don't wear it around the base because I like the feeling of having nothing on."

"Yeah," Tex agreed, then paused. "Wait, what?"

Church sighed heavily. "What. The fuck. Is she doing here? Command didn't say anything about new recruits."

Sister glared at him. "Hey, I've been here for a while now—"

"Not you, Sister. Her." He glared at the redhead. "Who the fuck is she, anyways? Did the Reds send her over to spy on us?"

Tex laughed at him. "You seem a little… tense, Church. What, did ya catch O'Malley or something?"

Church breathed in. He breathed out. Then he remembered that he didn't breathe because he was a robot and sighed heavily again. "Listen: I just got woken up in the middle of the fucking night, and I just want to know what the hell is going on here, okay?"

"You and me both, robo-dude." The redhead crosses her arms over her chest. "I was chilling with Jinksy in the Ovoid Quarantine and then there was a big flash of light, and then I woke up here, and that one—" She pointed to Sister. "Well, she was saying something really freaky."

Tex got up and led Church away. "I think she's from the past," she confessed softly. "I think she time-traveled somehow."

Church hit his head against the wall three times, using the smacks to punctuate his sentence: "God. Fucking. Dammit. I do not want to deal with this right now, Tex. I want to sleep, and I already have to deal with Caboose. Just… figure something out. Get her out of here."

"Yes, sir," Tex drawled, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "Want me to shine the tank, too? Maybe I can sweep the floors? Or maybe—"

"Shut up," Church hissed. "I'm going back to bed."

Tex chuckled and shook her head as she returned to the girl, Claudia, and sat down. She'd built herself a humanoid 'skin' just in case something like this happened. She was a Freelancer; she liked to be prepared.

"I think we should discuss how you got here," she murmured quietly. "Did you… go faster than the speed of light for any particular amount of time?"

Claudia shook her head. "Look, all I know is that I was with my best friend, talking, figuring out what to do with some of the artifacts we'd just gotten, and then all of a sudden I was here."

"Right." Tex glanced at Sister. "And… what year are you from?"

"Last I checked, it was the start of the twenty-first century."

Tex nodded slowly. "Okay… Well, it's the middle of the twenty-sixth now."

Claudia blinked. "Whoa… wait, what? I traveled in time? That's… kind of awesome, actually."

That made Tex smile. Not many people could travel five centuries and then just shrug and say it was cool. She definitely liked this girl.

Then Claudia rested her elbows on the table. "So… can I get back? I mean, it'd be cool if I can. I want to tell my brother all about this place. He'd like it, I think. And Jinksy, too, from what she's told me of her brother."

Tex glanced at Sister questioningly, and she just shrugged. "I was telling her about the time my brother walked in on his friend and they—"

"Shut up, Sister!" was heard from the other side of the canyon. Caboose suddenly appeared from under the table; Tex chose to not question how he got there without anyone noticing.

"That was loud," he said, his eyes wide. "Do you think Church heard it? Because if he wakes up again, he will be cranky. And nobody likes it when Church is cranky."

"Yeah," Tucker agreed, finally entering the kitchen instead of lurking around the corner like the creep he was. "He tries harder than usual to kill Junior."

Tex was sure Claudia was about to ask when there was a sleepy "Honk?" from the doorway, and Junior was there.

"Hey, little dude," Tucker said, getting an excited blarg in response. "I'll be with you in a second, kid. Just gotta take care of some business in here." Junior honked again and left.

Tex eyed Tucker, not sure if she liked this new development. "You speak alien now, Tucker?"

The man just shrugged. "I picked up some things. Least I can do if it's my kid's first language, right? Anyways, new girl, that's my kid. Don't mess with him."

Claudia was obviously very confused. "I… how… I don't… that… it was…"

"Take your time," Tex drawled. "A lot of us are still confused about it. Particularly some parts." She glanced towards Caboose, who seemed determined to find some cookies. She didn't really mind the idiot; she thought he was cute.

Caboose straightened and turned around, pouting. "I still do not understand how Tucker caught pregnancy."

Claudia was still staring at Junior. "That's… it… came out of… but…"

Tex patted Claudia's hand gently. "We'll discuss it later, Claudia. For now, why don't we get you settled?"

"She can sleep with me," Sister quickly offered.

Tex turned to look at Tucker expectantly, to find the man shrugging. "That's too easy, Tex. I need a challenge."

Tex continued to look at him incredulously as he turned and walked out, visibly restraining himself. Then she glanced back to the others, where Caboose was still pouting and Sister was giving Claudia a look that made Tex uneasy.

She knew that if she gave Claudia to Sister for the night, the girl probably wouldn't come back without scars; Caboose didn't know what girls were for, but she didn't really want to submit Claudia to… that.

With a sigh, the Freelancer extended a hand to Claudia. "Come on. You can sleep in my room."

Claudia patted Caboose gently on the head. He was adorable, if a little silly, and probably her favorite out of everyone in the Blue base. Church was an asshole, Tucker was annoying, Tex was scary, and Sister was… off.

She'd heard some about the people at the other end of the canyon, and a lot more than she'd ever wanted to know about Grif, but she'd never met them.

And while Claudia was still confused about what was going on, exactly, she knew if she could get back to Earth, she could find the Warehouse, and they could find something to send her back. There was no way the Warehouse wasn't around anymore.

"I seriously need to get to Earth," she said again to Church.

"Yeah," he said with a chuckle. "And I need a unicorn. Listen, the last time anyone asked for something from Earth, we got Grif's sister. And before that, we got Caboose. So, uh, I'm not asking for anything anymore, thank you very much. Lesson learned."

Claudia's eyes went towards the silly man mentioned. "Oh, come on, he's not that bad."

Church glared at her. She wasn't quite sure how she knew, but it had a lot to do with his tone: "He killed me. Twice."

Caboose's head snapped around. "Tucker did it!" he shouted from the tank, Sheila. That was weird, too.

But Claudia couldn't focus on that. She had to focus on her objective. "I need to get back to Earth!"

Church let out an irritated sigh. "I told you, it's not gonna happen! So just… go help Tex with whatever she's doing."

Tex was relaxing on the cliff, somewhat keeping an eye on the Red team, when she heard soft, unarmored footsteps behind her. "Hey, Claud," she greeted. "Church kick you out already?"

"Apparently, I can't go back to Earth."

Tex chuckled. "Sick of us already?"

"I miss my friends," Claudia muttered as she sat cross-legged next to Tex. "And my brother."

"If the Dakotas taught me anything, it's that family's overrated." At Claudia's confused and confusing glance, Tex just shrugged. "They were twins. They had… issues."

Claudia chuckled. "My brother got trapped in a transdimensional space and I spent half my life trying to either avenge him or free him. Whichever came first."

"Last I heard, South killed her brother."

Claudia paused at that. "Okay… I guess my issues don't really compare, then." She drifted away for a moment, obviously lost in her own world. Tex waited a minute before she interrupted.

"What're you thinking of?" was the question that she couldn't help but ask. She felt a strange urge to connect with this girl, just like she felt with Church.

The redhead didn't answer for a while, but when she did, it was in a wistful tone. "Home. Especially the people there. We had this routine, of sorts. Jinks is always up first, and he wakes me up, and then we wake up Pete, and he'd always go straight for the food because he always goes straight for the food. We wouldn't think of going near Myka's room, because… well, H.G. gets cranky when she's woken up early, and Myka likes to have a few minutes alone with her when they wake up. They also get the first shower."

"And Myka is…"

"A woman." Claudia glanced at Tex. "What, are things even more repressed in the future?"

"No, no." Tex chuckled. "I'm just wondering who everyone is. I mean, if you're gonna be here a while, might as well learn things about you." She neglected to mention that she hadn't taken that courtesy with anyone else on the base, except for Church. And Caboose, a little, but she couldn't help herself—she liked the kid, just like everyone else.

Nobody liked to admit it, but they all liked him.

"Oh." Claudia shrugged and stretched out. "Well, Myka's an ex-Secret Service agent. Do you know what that is?" Tex nodded, trying not to look at Claudia as she returned to stretching her body, revealing strips of skin here and there. Her clothes were small on her; Tex would have to give her something larger to wear. So it wasn't such a distraction. "Apparently, she got transferred to the Warehouse with Pete, her president-protection partner, after they had an encounter with an artifact."

"And H.G.?"

"Oh, she's H.G. Wells."

Tex paused, lowering her sniper rifle for a minute to look at Claudia. "Wait, what? H.G. Wells was a woman?"

Claudia chuckled. "Looks like the future's not as smart as it likes to think. Yeah, she was. She got bronze-coated and stuck in the Warehouse, and eventually she got busted out by a bad guy. But she doesn't want to be bad anymore, and now she's on our team. Although I think she's still bad at night."

Tex smiled involuntarily at the idea, and then nudged Claudia's shoulder. "So, what about you? Got a guy or gal in your life?"

Claudia's lips pursed. "Sort of." The tone made it clear that she didn't want any more questions on the subject; Tex nodded and returned her attention to the Reds.

Grif sighed heavily. "For the last time, Donut, I will not let you braid my hair or inspect my holes or anything else you want to do. Ever."

"What?" Grif was startled when it was Simmons, not Donut, standing in his doorway. Simmons shook his head. "No, Sarge wants you to come up to look at something… what was that about Donut?"

"Nothing," Grif said hastily, quickly donning his armor. Donut had been pestering Grif ever since Sister told him… some stories. Well, pestering him more.

He followed Simmons at his own pace. When he arrived at the top of the base, he took the sniper rifle with a sigh. "What am I looking for?"

"There," Sarge whispered, for some reason. "Up on the cliff. That Tex has been up there all morning with a sniper rifle. I think they're about to attack!"

Grif sighed. "Or," he muttered, fully aware that Sarge would ignore him and Simmons would kiss Sarge's ass again, "she could just be sitting up there and watching us, the same way we're always watching them."

Oh, how he loved to be right. "Simmons!" Sarge cried out. "I need you to go and…" He paused. "What's that?"

Grif looked back at Tex; someone who wasn't in armor was joining her, who he didn't recognize. "Uh, it looks like another girl joined Blue team." He lowered the rifle and glanced at Simmons. "How come they get three girls—" He paused and considered what he was saying, and then started over: "Two girls and Tex, and all we get is Donut?"

Sarge gasped and snapped, "Hand that over, Private!"

Grif handed the sniper rifle to Sarge as Simmons asked, "Do you think it could just be Sister without her armor on?"

Grif shook his head vehemently. "I told her to never, ever take her armor off when Tucker was in a five-mile radius. Besides, she's not a redhead."

Simmons glanced at his friend. "You're absolutely sure?"

"I know my own fucking sister, Simmons."

"Men," Sarge said suddenly, gravely, "we have a situation."

Grif sighed. "Of course. All we ever have is situations. Know what? You deal with it. Take Donut. I'm going to take a nap." He went back to his room, ignoring Sarge. Whatever it was, they could deal with it. He was not in the mood. And he needed to call his sister.

Church was ignoring Caboose's attempts to make him his best friend when Tucker burst in. "Hey, Church, Sarge is calling a truce and asking for our surrender."

Church hit his head on the wall on the way out, grabbing his sniper rifle as he trotted out to the middle of the canyon. Tex was coming down from the cliff with that new girl. "Tex," Church called to her. "Can you go make sure Caboose doesn't choke on crayons or something while I'm gone? Or… actually, let him do it. Might fix him."

He kept Claudia slightly behind him as Sarge, Simmons and Donut approached. Donut, he didn't really mind—he was like Caboose. More harm to his teammates. Actually, Donut was pretty harmless to anything.

"What's up, fuckers?" Church asked. "Why are you asking for a surrender? Did you forget the thing where I have a tank? You know, the tank that's kicked your ass on more than one occasion?" If he had a face, he'd be smirking.

"You mean the tank that killed you?"

"Good one, sir!"

Church let out an irritated sigh. "What the fuck do you want, Reds?" he hissed.

"The new girl!" Sarge barked. "She obviously belongs on Red team! Her hair is red!"

It took all of Church's energy not to facepalm. This was not worth it, and it was becoming increasingly clear as Simmons added, "And Grif doesn't think it's fair because you already have his sister and Tex! We need a girl!"

The fact that he did not really want to deal with this shit was cemented by Donut: "It'll be great to finally have someone to talk to!"

"You know what? I'm sick of this. I'm sick of all of it." He turned to Claudia. "Go with them. Not my fucking problem anymore. Tucker, let's go find your hellspawn and shoot it in the fucking head." He walked back to Blue base, ignoring the confused girl behind him and Tucker's confused remarks about how he thought Church was cool with Junior.

Sister was trying to get Caboose to do acid when Church and Tucker walked in without that hot girl. She hid her drugs; Church was no fun.

Tex asked, "Where's Claudia?"

Church sighed. "She's with the Reds. They came over and asked for her, so I gave her to them. Simple as that. Because I'm done with this bullshit. You're leaving, Sister is going back on the space ship, I'm gonna kill Tucker's thing, and then everything's gonna be back to the way it was before, and it'll be great."

Sister frowned; she didn't want to go back on the ship, she was having too much fun! Besides, it was boring and scary without Grif, even if it was Grif's job to shoot at her.

And Tex was kinda hot.

Caboose considered his crayons. Sister told him that the blue one tasted like blueberry, so would the red one taste like redberry? There was only one way to find out.

That night, Tex couldn't sleep, and she woke up to find Sister snuggled up to her. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, or an unwelcome one. The girl was cute and harmless, although she did feel a little aroused whenever she woke up with her in her bed.

She gave Sister a quick kiss as she got out of bed and got her armor on. Her mechanical body was really advanced, and operated almost the exact same as a human body, so she felt a certain amount of arousal when she felt the girl against her… she'd have to take care of that later.

Tex activated her cloaking as she ran towards Red base. It was easy to get pass their security system (the password was password, she learned that a while ago) and she figured Claudia would probably be in Donut's room. She swept the girl up into her arms and ran out before anyone could hear her.

"Huh?" Claudia yawned up at her, making Tex smile. "Tex?" Claudia shifted in her arms to look at her fully. "I thought I belonged to Red team."

About halfway between the two bases, Tex put Claudia down. "Yeah, well, I'm kinda fond of you, so I don't want you over there, especially without armor." She took off her helmet and looked at her seriously. "I'm gonna help you get back to Earth, Claud. Because I know who you are, now. And you need to get back there. I requested transport to the home planet, Priority Alpha-One. It'll be here tomorrow, and you'll be home in just a few days."

Claudia smiled brilliantly and hugged the Freelancer as well as could be managed through the armor; Tex just patted her back gently and picked her up again after re-attaching her helmet. "Come on," Tex muttered, "let's get back, quickly."

Soon, they were settled in Sister's room, since Sister was currently in Tex's bed. Tex curled protectively around Claudia, snuggling her into her body. The redhead kissed Tex, and she kissed back gently.

She remembered this woman. She didn't tell anyone, didn't even hint at it, but she knew exactly who and what she was. It wasn't exactly a gift, not a curse, something in-between. She could remember life as Alison. She'd never tell Church, because she knew exactly who he was, too, what he was… a shell of his former self, in more ways than one.

In many more ways.

She could remember her younger years—a teenager or just beginning her twenties, one of the two—spending time with this woman. Ageless. The Caretaker for the famous Warehouse for so long. They never traded kisses while they were together, like Tex was doing with Claudia now, but she'd always looked at her with a strange expression on her face…

Tex knew why, now. Claudia always said that she could remember everything from her past.

Tex woke up before everyone else and urged Claudia to clothe herself again, and then she carried the girl gently to middle of the canyon, smiling at the pilot who touched down. "Didn't get stuck at that desk job after all, huh?"

The woman shrugged. "Nah. I did. Just figured, since it was you calling, they'd make an exception. Aren't many of you guys left anymore, you know."

Tex chuckled. "Yeah. I know. How's Wash?"

"He's… Wash. Take care. Maine's still out there. I'll get this one back safe and sound."

Unable to help herself, she kissed Claudia once more on the way out; when she left the ship, it took off, and she was left looking at Blue team. "She gone?" Church asked quietly, tone caring. Tucker was on the ground, groaning and clutching his head in pain; Tex could guess the story behind that one, and she was thankful to Church.

She simply nodded in response. "She'll be back home soon. Where she belongs. And ten or so years ago, we'll be talking about philosophy and how annoying men can be while we wait for her girlfriend."

Church nodded back. "Uh, sorry about before. Just… you know."

Tex nodded, smiling. Yeah. She knew.

She threw an arm around Sister as she led the girl back to base. "Come on, Sister. I've got a lot to talk to you about, and a lot more to show you. But first, we've gotta lock all the doors and windows, so Tucker can't watch."

"Cool!"

Church was in their usual recon position, spying on the Reds, when he heard Tucker and Caboose coming. "Dude," Tucker was saying to Caboose, "I do not know what's been up with those two chicks lately. I mean, Tex's door is always locked in the morning, and Sister says they haven't been getting it on, and Sister's not smart enough to lie."

"They're talking, Tucker," Church muttered, now instantly annoyed. "That's what girls do. They talk. Get your head out of the fucking gutter before I smack it out."

Tucker took up his usual position next to Church. "Dude, quit your bitching. Come to think of it, something's been up with you lately, too. What's got your panties in a twist?"

"Don't make me hit you, Tucker."

Tucker walked off with a huff, but Caboose stayed where he was, silent. For once.

Truthfully, Church was just annoyed. At everything. At Tex and Sister and Junior and… everything that was just making obstacles for him for no fucking reason.

Something crashed into the canyon and Tucker immediately started shouting for Church. He sighed heavily and fell back a little, into Caboose. "Caboose," he muttered. "Why does the universe hate me?"

"I don't hate you, Church. You are my best friend."

"I know, Caboose." He patted the other man on the back and put an arm around him. "I know. Come on. Might as well deal with this."

Because, he suddenly realized, he could take it. Because he had Caboose and Tucker and Tex and Sister to take it with him. Sappy, but true. He'd never say it, especially not to Caboose and definitely not to Tex. But it was true.

If he wasn't a faceless robot, he'd smile.