Part 1 of the "where there's poison, there's a remedy" series.
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: Gen
Fandom: Red vs. Blue
Relationship: Leonard L. Church & Lavernius Tucker
Characters: Lavernius Tucker, Locus | Samuel Ortez, Leonard L. Church | AI Program Alpha, Michael J. Caboose
Additional Tags: Alternate Season 15 Ending, time-travel, bg!tucker is so stupid writing him makes me stupid, also ngl some mild ableism because blood gulch, GFY
Additional Notes: Thanks to Sroloc_Elbisivni and Norcumi for beta-ing! Alternate title: "two ghosts for the price of one"
Tucker finds the weird hobo guy in the caves, slumped against a jagged rock wall, dead fucking asleep.
He walks right up to the guy, planning on nudging him awake, before he gets a good look at the armor he's wearing and backs the fuck up. It isn't Special Forces Black, but it looks experimental as fuck, and Tucker isn't ready for his tombstone to read "kicked some badass super-soldier awake; what a fucking moron." He's not that dumb.
He is still kinda dumb, though, so instead he stands a little ways away and says, "Man, I really hope you aren't another Freelancer, cuz if you are, we are boned. "
The guy doesn't really startle awake, but he goes so still it looks like he's not even breathing, so it's, like, close enough. Really slow, like fucking creepy slow, Weird Hobo Guy's weirdass-looking helmet tilts up towards Tucker and just sorta looks at him for an uncomfortably long time. Then, moving like he's had the shit kicked out of him, he straightens up and gets to his feet.
Standing up, Tucker upgrades Weird Hobo Guy to Big Weird Hobo Guy, because holy shit. Dude is built and it just makes Tucker feel even smaller and shorter on comparison. He's so distracted by the sudden wall of a person that it takes him a second to realize that Big Weird Hobo Guy's holding his hands up because, technically, Tucker's pointing his gun at him.
Right, whoops.
Dude also hasn't said anything yet, which is making Tucker pretty fucking nervous, so after a second he blurts out, "C'mon, man, don't keep me in suspense over here. I need to know if I gotta update my funeral arrangements."
Big Weird Hobo Dude kinda… tilts his head to the side, then says, "I'm not a Freelancer," in the deepest, scariest, fuck-off voice Tucker's ever heard. Including Tex's voice-filter, because that was obviously a voice-filter, and this guy is just a legit baritone badass. Tucker isn't embarrassed to admit he kinda wants to be the guy when he grows up, even with the whole "sleeping in caves" thing.
Tucker also isn't embarrassed to say he jumps about a foot in the air and fumbles his gun just hearing him talk. He's not ashamed of having functional self-preservation instincts, okay? Big Weird Hobo Dude obviously notices, too, because after a funny little pause he adds, with something that kinda sounds like an emotion of some sort, "And I'm not going to kill you, either."
Which, like, isn't the most reassuring way to say "I come in peace", but hey, at least the guy tried. Tucker shrugs and takes it, making sure to point his gun somewhere not at the guy. "Okay, sweet," he says and he turns back toward the mouth of the caves. "Might as well come back to the base, though, if your only other option is sleeping in the caves like a…"
Tucker looks back to see that Big Weird Hobo Dude's, like, fuckin' Disapparated his way out of the cave or something. Poof, no Big Weird Hobo Dude to be seen, adios amigos, thanks for the mammaries or whatever.
With a sigh, Tucker resigns himself to getting yelled at by Church for losing the one person in this canyon that might have helped them beat the Reds. Fucking typical.
.
Church does, in fact, yell at him. And makes fun of him for going to jerk off in the caves (which he didn't) and getting scared off by a ghost.
Tucker doesn't think that Big Weird Hobo Guy was a ghost—he doesn't even think Church is a ghost, not really—but he still takes the opportunity to point out that between the guy in the caves and Church in the base, they've got the whole haunting thing on lock.
Church yells at him some more for that.
.
A few days later, Church yells at Caboose for eating all of the pasta-ish MRE's without ordering more to replace them. Caboose swears up and down that pasta is slimy and gross and he would never, so Church goes to yell at the fat orange guy, and Tucker remembers the way the guy in the caves had just—disappeared. Sort of like how Tex had disappeared with that camo unit of hers.
He's going to mention it to Church when he gets back from yelling at the Reds but when Church does get back, the fucker decides to blame Tucker for it instead. For once, Tucker agrees with Caboose—the pasta-ish MRE's taste like ass—and ends up forgetting to mention the whole "possibly invisible dude" thing.
Tucker doesn't think about Invisible Hobo Dude again until he walks into the base a month later and finds the guy getting blood all over the couch. Which isn't really a couch—it's four cots set longways against the wall, two-by-two, and covered in shitty military pillows—but, hey, if the dude was planning on dying in Blue Base, he at least picked the most comfortable place to do it.
"Church, that scary hobo is back!" Tucker yells after a little while of trying to figure out if the guy is dead already or not. "And he's bleeding out on our couch!"
"Tucker, I swear to—fuck!" Church screeches as he stomps into their makeshift living room and sees that the guy is real. And still bleeding all over the couch. "What. The hell. Is that?"
"Not deaf is what," that fuck-off scary voice says, muffled by the way the guy is collapsed on the couch, face-plate shoved into at least three shitty pillows. The guy shifts his head a little to the side so that his voice is clearer and adds, "And I'm not bleeding out, either." Tucker gets the feeling that the guy is actually kind of offended by the implication.
Church fumbles with his sniper rifle until he's got it pointed at Invisible Hobo Guy, not that the guy can see it. Not being able to see it doesn't seem to stop him, though, because he snorts and says:
"Your grip is awkward, you aren't braced properly, and your sights are misaligned. If you tried to shoot me, you would miss, end up on the floor, and even in this condition, it wouldn't be difficult to eliminate you."
"… ho-ly fuck," Tucker whispers, exchanging a look with Church. Not a Freelancer, his finely-shaped ass…
"Um," Church stutters, because what the fuck are you supposed to say to that? If he wasn't in a robot body, Tucker's pretty sure he'd be sweating bullets; Tucker's pretty sure he's sweating bullets anyway.
Scary Invisible Hobo Guy sighs. "I was trying to be helpful," he grumbles into his pillows, like he's answering a question or comment that nobody else could hear. Tucker and Church look at each other again, with increasing panic. If the terrifying homeless man with highly-experimental armor and the ability to turn invisible is certifiably crazy, shit was gonna get really bad, really fast.
There's a short silence during which Church struggles for something to say, Tucker begins edging toward the door, and their homicidal new house-guest lays very still like he's listening to something. Probably the voices in his head telling him to kill them all and eat their livers or something. They both startle about as badly as it's humanly possible to startle when the guy lets out an honest-to-god growl.
"Fine," he snarls, shifting like he's settling down onto the couch for a good, long nap with a weird air of defiance. "You can talk to them, then."
The tension in the room is already pretty much at critical mass and just needs one more weird fuckin' thing to happen before it explodes. That weird fuckin' thing, apparently, is the second (arguably, third) ghost of fucking Blood Gulch Canyon fading into existence next to their hobo. "Don't be such a fuckin' baby," the ghost says. And the room finally does explode as Caboose walks in and the ghost turns to them with an eerily familiar, "Buenos dias, cockbites."