Don't Write Me A Postscript

Church stared at the same four walls for several days. Agent Nevada didn't bother to bring him anything except for a few books that the Director probably knew he'd like to read. Church ignored them. He stewed in his thoughts instead—because that was oh so healthy. Church's mind wandered to each death that held direct cause in his hands. He wandered through what Tucker would be doing for the UNSC, where Caboose would be stationed—would the idiot be okay?

Did Command bother to warn his new Captain of Caboose's special circumstances? Would they even bother to make sure Caboose got the needed extra oxygen? Would his new Captain even care?

(I don't care)

(I don't)

What about Tucker? What did the UNSC even want with him?

(what were they doing to him?)

Grif and Simmons would be fine. They were together. That at least set Church's mind at ease, but the thought of Caboose out there—the thought of Tucker—the stark reminder of Tex and Junior and even Captain Flowers—Church grimaced and scrubbed a hand, frustrated, through his hair.

"FFFUCK!" Church spat and bowed over until his face was pressed into his knees. Why couldn't he just stop thinking for once?

"Hm, not the greetin' I was expectin'."

Church relaxed slowly, his limbs untensed but he kept himself curled around his knees as he sighed loudly.

"I thought you were going to leave me alone," Chruch grumbled.

The door behind the Director slid shut and he walked through the room and sat himself down on the edge of the bed. Church wanted to snort at how 'fatherly' the action was. How quaint.

"I gave you several days to settle in," the Director said calmly. "Now, we need to talk."

"No we fucking don't."

The Director sighed and Church peered between his knees. The man pinched the bridge of his nose—he looked exasperated. Well, good.

"Alpha—" the Director started, and fuck he had that parental tone too.

Church jerked upright and glared at his own face, teeth barred as he snapped out, furious, "Do not ever fucking call me that! It's Church, fuckface!"

The Director rolled his eyes. "Oh do stop being childish," the man uttered exasperatedly.

"Well then stop acting like you care all of a sudden!" Church shot back. He uncurled the more infuriated he became, and the Director just stared at him dispassionately.

Church's namesake—his other, his—

(what was the Director to him?)

—waited a moment and then sighed. "I do care, Alpha."

"Fuck you care," Church snapped out. "And stop calling me that!"

The Director frowned. "I refuse to call you Church," he said sharply, "as it is not your name."

"Yes it fucking is!"

"I never gave you the name Church, Alpha!" the Director snapped back, then took a minute to visibly calm himself while Church watched him.

Church clenched and unclenched his fingers; he dug them into the fabric of the fatigues he'd been offered on his first day aboard the ship. Church wished for the armor that he'd worn instead, but it'd been insisted upon that he ditch it to put the rest of the crew at ease. Only the few remaining Freelancers got to wear armor apparently.

"Why don't you just call me Private then?" Church grumbled eventually. "You had no problem with it earlier."

"For your protection," the Director sighed, and then palmed his face. "Lord I forgot what a little shit you were."

"A few years away could do that to anyone," Church grumbled. "I forgot what a fucking utter cockbite you were."

"Language," the Director snapped.

"Make me," Church snapped back.

A small part of Church felt childishly vindicated when the Director groaned out of sheer frustration. He thought, yeah, take that asshole, and through sheer force of will kept his grin from his face. Small pieces of payback like this felt wonderful—little ways to needle and get under the man's skin, to repay him for all the shit he put Tex through.

(put me through?)

(no Tex)

(not me)

(can't be me)

(never me)

"I figured a more informal setting would put you at ease," the Director started after a minute of silence. "More likely to discuss with me what happened at Blood Gulch."

"I don't want to 'discuss' anything with you," Church ground out.

The Director licked his lips and sighed heavily. "Alpha—" at Church's growl he relented and said, "Church," and Church stilled in surprise. "If we are to ensure your safety I need to know what happened at Outpost Alpha."

Church eyed the Director, surprised by the sudden acquiescence on his name. Carefully Church said, "Why don't you ask Vic?"

The Director fought down a growl of frustration. Church calculated the perspiration on the man's brow, the way his pulse ticked up and how his neck started to flush out of increased agitation.

"V.I.C.'s reports are…sporadic at best," the Director said carefully, "and the security footage is…unhelpful."

"Why not ask the rest of the guys then?" Church said. He finally began to unwind just a bit the more annoyed the Director got. Church leaned forward, curious. His hands still trembled—they probably would his entire time on the Father of Intuition.

"Their testimony is…questionable," the Director said carefully. Church snorted while he clenched his fists.

(how dare he touch them)

(what did he do?)

(they better not be hurt)

The Director looked directly at Church, looked at the glower and the narrowed green eyes—the way the stubble on the man's face seemed to almost darken while Church stared at him. The Director sighed. "You know what they are like better than I do."

"Yeah," Church agreed and looked away. "What do you want to know?"

The Director smiled, and Church wanted to punch it off his face.

"Start with what happened to Agent Florida, and go from there."

(Florida?)

(Flowers)

(Florida)

(well shit)

Church mimicked a noisy breath, closed his eyes, and began to recount what happened at Blood Gulch in painfully accurate detail.

The full debrief of what happened at Blood Gulch took more than a single day. For several hours over the next few weeks the Director would step into Church's room, sit down on the bed, and dully Church would recount the events of Blood Gulch in detail. He stopped baiting the Director after the third day—there was no point in it. Not now. Not when the memories burned sharply within his mind and threatened to drag him under.

"I'm sorry, what did you say Omega called himself?" the Director blinked, his tone incredulous.

"O'Mally," Church rolled his eyes. "Tex'd been calling him that too."

The Director leaned back, surprised. "I…did not expect that."

"You and me fucking both," Church grumbled.

"Although…it is not so surprisin'," the Director mused, and when Church looked at him the Director raised a single eyebrow.

(alpha)

(omega)

(church)

(o'mally)

(oh)

When Church reached the point of the bomb, of 'Andy' and the sword, Tucker's weird alien child and Gamma's twisted sense of humor, the Director sighed heavily.

"Well that…was not how scenario three was meant to go," the Director mumbled. "Explains why the UNSC wanted Lavernius Tucker so bad, in the least."

Church blinked. "You…didn't know?"

"Honestly I thought it was some insane fever dream," the Director admitted. "Havin' the Sangheili interfere in a Freelancer Scenario was not…accounted for."

Church frowned. "But…aren't we at war with them? The Covenant and shit?"

The Director pursed his lips. "That, ah, ended. A month ago."

Church stared. "Just…just like that?"

"Just like that," the Director said, almost bitterly. It threw Church for a loop.

"Huh."

They sat in silence, all thoughts about reports left off to the wayside. The Director thought about the implications—a human-sangheili hybrid, the tentative peace that had been brokered after the mess with the Covenant and the Halo rings—and Church pondered the empty feeling, the blankness of the Great War being over and done with.

"I…expected more," Church mumbled. "I think."

The Director sighed. "So did I."

Church grew emphatic towards the end of his 'debrief' days later. He gesticulated and cursed more often—cursed Florida-Flowers, cursed Wyoming, cursed Tex, cursed anyone he could think of. He grew heated and infuriated in equal measure and questioned F.I.L.S.S.' deteriorating systems in the tank, questioned everything he knew in some respects. What Church did know collectively the Director didn't quite follow.

"You lost track of Agent Texas?" the Director questioned, a frown at his lips.

Church eyed him with his glower, face pinched in the way the Director quickly came to know as a mix of frustration and not-quite-hate. Admittedly deserved, the Director mused. He came back to see Church gesticulate at him, middle finger in the air with a sneer.

"Very mature," the Director drawled.

"Had to get your attention somehow," Church snapped out. "Besides, do you really think I could keep track of her?"

For a moment the Director watched him, and then looked away. "I had hoped…but no, I did not expect it. She was always…willful."

Before the last word even completely left his mouth the Director found himself flat on his back with Church over him. He held one fist clenched, pounded into the mattress of his cot dangerously close to the Director's face, the rest of him pressed down on the older man's chest as he snarled.

"She's not yours," Church growled.

The Director arched an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Church punched the bed again and leaned down; his entire body vibrated with fury, with fear, with sorrow and loss. The Director categorized each twitch, each way Church's face twisted as he struggled with his words. He watched, he waited—because this was a response Church had yet to give him. This was new.

Church just loomed over him, frozen, shaking, hand almost embedded into the cot as he tried to regain control of his own memories. Of what happened. Of the last time he even saw—

—the pelican raised up into the air and Church could hear Shiela's countdown. He wanted to race up, to grab the pelican and down it with his own bear hands but he—he couldn't. He wasn't strong enough. He was never strong enough. Church switched to their private channel, just for him and just for her.

"Tex, don't do this," Church pleaded—please don't leave me, please don't go, don't return to Freelancer, I need you.

All the words he couldn't say—he wouldn't.

For a second Tex said nothing, and then softly, "Goodbye."

Church's entire world dissolved with that one word. He wasn't even fully aware of his fight with Sarge, of cussing the man out for placing Andy on the pelican—of the threat to Tex's life. Tex said goodbye. Did she know?

Did she know?

Church stared up at the sky as the flames rained down into the atmosphere that ate them up greedily.

Did she know?

(Tex?)

"She said goodbye."

Church blinked to find the Director staring up at him, baffled.

"I'm…sorry?" he didn't understand.

"Tex," Church said, and the words felt like a struggle. "She…she said goodbye. We hate goodbye's."

(why?)

(goodbye means)

(goodbye is)

(forever)

"She said goodbye," Church repeated, and the Director watched him. "She…"

The Director sighed. He closed his eyes and murmured a short, "I see."

"Why would she…we hate goodbye's. She…she said goodbye," Church murmured, and there was that pitched whine in the back of his throat—oh-so-familiar.

(no)

(oh god no)

(allison no!)

(ALLISON!)

The Director's eyes snapped open a second later when Church pressed his head into the older man's chest with a faint keen. He stared at the dark head of synthetic hair, stared at—at a mirror of his own grieving form. Part of the Director's throat clogged him. Part of him—and he swallowed and fought down his own rampant grief for just a minute. Instead he laid back; he didn't bother to fight Church off of him, for which Church felt grateful.

Church needed this, not that he'd ever admit it. Especially not to this man who set off all sorts of warning bells in his head, and who simultaneously felt like the most safest place to be. It was a confusing mess built in a confusing mess, but at least the Director let him have this. Let him have his grief without anything else. Without an ultimatum.

Church held one of the books the Director, through Agent Nevada, provided him back when this trip first started. It honestly had a very interesting plot, one Church would admit quickly caught his eye. There was no romance, more just intrigue and adventure and Church wondered if he could possibly convince the Director to give him some comics too. He hadn't read comics in years.

(technically he never read comics at all)

(semantics)

The door slid open and Church didn't bother to glance over. He knew easily enough that the Director stood in the doorway; he'd relearned the mans footsteps, the sound of his heartbeat and the way he breathed in his time aboard the Father of Intuition. He didn't acknowledge the Director aside from a careless flip of a page.

The Director watched him, stepped into the room, and the door slid shut behind him.

"We will be arriving in a week above the planet," the Director said. Church didn't acknowledge. "For your safety and to prevent the mistakes from before, you will be on your own at Outpost 48, code-name High Ground." Another flip of the page. "The previous red and blue teams of High Ground wiped one another out, and we haven't had the manpower to re-staff the locations yet. It should provide suitable cover."

The Director waited, but when Church didn't say anything further he sighed and continued to speak.

"You will be provided materials of maintenance and care of your body, of course," the Director said lightly, "and you will have direct contact with Agent Nevada only. Relay any requests for supplies through him. We will provide munitions and weaponry to amply defend yourself as need be."

The Director waited, but still he received nothing. Church wondered if it threw the man for a loop that he wasn't being hostile again. His own understanding of feeling hot-and-cold toward the Director certain threw himself for a loop, after all. The silence ticked on aside from the turning of the page. Two minutes.

"If that is all, then," the Director mused, a frown on his face.

"Can I get some comics?" Church asked. "And books?"

The Director paused. "I…will see what I can do."

"Great. Thanks. Now get out."

Church didn't need to look up to see those green eyes scrutinizing him before the Director sighed and left the room. He could hear the door slip open, and then slip back shut. That was when he glanced up—and yes, he was alone.

(he deserved to be alone)

After six weeks Church found himself finally upon solid ground, staring up at the ruins of Outpost 48. The pelican took off behind him, and his radio tuned to pick up Agent Nevada yet again explaining that the first drop of equipment and supplies would be in two more weeks. He'd need to make do until then.

Not that Church really needed the supplies right away. It'd mostly be the necessary materials to maintain his android body, armor, and weapons at any rate. Instead Church focused on the Outpost, focused on the giant gaping hole in the wall—the caution tape and the cones—and cursed.

"Oh you fucking cockbite."

Church was going to shoot the Director if he ever saw the man again.