A/N: As always I don't own Red Vs. Blue. Burnie does.

I pulled into my driveway and the three of us spilled out. I unlocked my specially reinforced door and walked inside. I went over to the linen closet, pulled up a shelf, pressed a button disguised as a knot of wood, and stepped inside. The door slammed shut and I felt myself quickly descending. After reaching a depth of just under 500 feet I reached the cave system that I had discovered just after I bought my home above ten years ago. When I rebuilt my home after the Meta incident I had converted the cave system into a base for the team I was building. As I exited the high speed lift, Simmons greeted me. "Hello John, I assume that you came down here to talk to Sarge?" he asked. I nodded yes. "Follow me. He's in Cell 6." he told me as he turned to lead me the brig I had built.

As I followed, I thought about the brig. There were seven cells. Six were standard for people we might have to hold for various reasons, and one was specially designed to hold the Meta. Before I knew it we had reached the brig. As I was about to enter Cell 6, Simmons put his hand on my shoulder. "Before you see him, I thought it is best to warn you he still has his shotgun. It took all of us just hold him down long enough to empty the rounds when we tried to get his armor off." he informed me. I nodded and entered.

What greeted me was a sorry sight. There, curled up like an infant in the corner, was Sarge, leader of the Blood Gulch Red Team. His skin was pale, like all the other soldiers of flesh and blood. But his eyes were hooded like he was tormented by internal demons and he cradled his shotgun in his arms. He looked up at me and said in a hoarse whisper that hid his thick southern accent "Is he going to be okay?"

"Who are you talking about?" I asked, although I had a good idea who it was.

"The Blue, the goddamn Blue that I shot." he cried.

"Ah yes, Alpha, or as you know him, Church. He'll live." I told him.

I saw relief blossom across his face. "Thank god. Oh, thank god." He said.

"Why do you want him to live? I thought you wanted all the Blues dead." I asked him, getting to the point of the visit.

He shook his head. "That was just to get thing done around the base. If I told them to do it because I ordered them to do it, nothing would get done." he said to me.

"Well, that explains that. But what happened upstairs? One would think tha..." I started to say before a thought dawned on me. "You have killed before, have you?" I asked.

"Yeah, my CSV indicates over 3 grand confirmed Covenant deaths with a further 500 unconfirmed during the war. But the only HUMAN I have ever killed was the clones of the bastard Freelancer Wyoming back in Blood Gulch, and I had to tell myself that it was only a copy of him for me to pull the trigger." he told me.

I had feared as much. "Okay here's what we are going to do. We are going to get you cleaned up and then I'm going to take to a Combat Shrink. There's one I know, she helped my dad after he came back from the Middle East." I informed him. He nodded and got to his feet. He shouldered his shotgun, walked out the door behind me, and pulled his helmet back on when we got to the door out of the brig. "Now grab Simmons and I'll show you both around here. I think you'll like here better than Valhalla." I told him, putting my arm around his shoulders.