ghostthatlingers | Sanctum IC Contact

He hears her coming down the stairs but doesn't move. Doesn't get out any glasses, doesn't think to offer her to join him. He doesn't even look up when she finds him, speaks.

"Couldn't sleep," he starts simply enough. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."

This is... weird. Any anger she may have felt before washes away with how surreal this moment feels. She takes a few steps closer and frowns as she studies him.

"Something wrong?"

"No. Yeah." He sighs and takes a swig from the bottle. "I, uh. I think I'm wrong."

"...Are you talking about being wrong in a different way than normal?" Because they have a lot of conversations where he's wrong. Usually very loud ones.

He tosses something on the table with a small clatter. They'd given him this bracelet, these charms, for a reason. Somehow, someone knew. Someone knew what he was, his connection to things. "They're all just parts that make up a whole. Kinda makes you wonder what's left in the original, huh."

That's something she hasn't seen. She runs her fingers over the charms as she reads the letters written on it. Unfortunately, there's a lot the people here know about them already and it's hard to figure out the extent of that knowledge.

"Is this about Epsilon showing up?"

"It's about him. And the Director. And me, and Delta, and Theta, and all the Freelancers, and you."

The ache in his head just pounds harder, and he takes another drink to try and quell it. "Leonard Church is at least three separate people. Hard not to take that personally."

She sets the bracelet down and shakes her head. So that's where his thoughts have been going lately.

"So what? You all go by the same name, big deal. None of you are the same."

"How is it that we're not the same and yet we all come from the exact same place? Tex, just because I exist doesn't make me real."

This is not quite the conversation she expected when she saw him down here and his words cause her to pause for a brief moment. "Because you've led different lives. Of course you're real. You're just as damn real as I am."

"I can't trust my own lived experience if I don't know what in my head is mine or someone else's. At least Epsilon remembers everything, and despite a bout of craziness, he seems to've come out okay for it."

"He remembers all the bad shit, Church." She sighs and reaches to place a hand on his shoulder. That's what people normally do in these situations, right? "Our memories are screwed up, but not all of them are from that asshole. We have plenty that are ours."

"He remembers all the bad shit that happened to me!" Church gives his head a smack, fingers clutching into his hair, as if he could somehow jostle something free. "And no, I don't want to remember being tortured into insanity, but it's still supposed to be mine to carry, isn't it?"

His other hand comes up to cover hers, appreciating that she's there at all. "We've got a good thing. And sometimes it's shitty. And sometimes you leave. But here is...here's probably the best chance we've got."

"If you think it's supposed to be yours, then talk to him about it. Don't push him, but I bet he'd be willing to share the burden." She gives his shoulder a squeeze and presses lightly against his back.

"None of it matters here and who knows how long we have here before the assholes in charge get us killed."

"Tex..." he sighs in a tone that seems to suggest she doesn't get it. But she would, wouldn't she? She'd know better than any of the rest of them.

"Who I am matters to me. Okay? All my life, I thought I knew exactly who I was. And then some asshole comes in and tells me everything I thought I knew was a lie. And I didn't believe him. I'm starting to think I was never supposed to, like a...like a firewall, or something? And you know what it's like, don't you. To be told you're not who you thought you were. That everything you are was built and copies and based off of something corrupt and rotted. Something so foreign to you."

"Everything I remember, all the memories I have about her, are shown through his eyes. So yeah, I know what it's like. I've just had longer to handle it." And by 'handle' she means ignore.

"I don't know what to tell you, Church. It's crappy and shitty and everything in between, but it's how we got here."

"It upsets you. And Delta. Those who know. It's disappointing, isn't it, that I don't answer to that name. That I hear Alpha and--and I don't associate that with me. I'm not a computer, Tex! Alpha's a computer who got used and abused, and everyone loves and cares about the Alpha so much--Director aside, obviously--and Alpha's this mystical fucking cure all fix-it for everything Project Freelancer fucked up. Who was so important that he got hidden away from everyone and everything so that nobody would ever find him and know what he was. I'm not that. I can't be that. I'm just some fucking idiot private who thinks he knows how to lead a squad of other fucking idiots into shit way bigger than any of them."

Vodka. Vodka is good. Much better than too much tequila. He doesn't let go of the bottle when he's done with his next swig, motioning vehemently with both arms.

"He replaced me! Caboose got sad that his friend fucking died on him that he decided, hey, he was gonna build a new best friend out of Epsilon, and then that's exactly what he fucking did. Maybe he's not me exactly, but apparently he's close enough to the real thing."

"It's Caboose. He's done worse and of course his dumb ass can't tell you two apart."

That look on his face? Does not sit well with her. There's only so much she can protect him from and she's failed too many times at it. Her arms wrap around his waist and she presses against his back as she rests her chin on his shoulder.

"It doesn't upset me and if it upsets the others, that's their problem. It's not your fault they've built up expectations of who you're supposed to be. You might be a stupid private, but you're my stupid private and if anyone has a problem with that, they can deal with the business-end of my rifle."

She's trying to be a rock. She has always been his rock. Even when they weren't together, the thought of her was always comforting, even if he never wanted her to be around the canyon, to get involved. He leans his head against hers and sighs.

"It's not even that--it's--I don't know what to do with that identity. The Alpha. Do you know what that means? It means that everything that has ever happened to any of us up until the point I--up until--up until I got here, all that is my fault. Flowers dying is my fault. South dying is my fault. Wash going crazy is because of me and my memories and my creation. Wyoming and Gamma, the Meta's rampage, you--the Reds and Blues of fucking Blood Gulch! All of that is on me, and I barely even have the slightest clue why. Because I can't say it. I can't...accept it. It's such bullshit!"

She snorts. "None of that crap is your fault. The Director started the whole project and the UNSC funded him and let him do whatever he wanted with no oversight. You didn't have a hand in any of the bullshit."

He's quiet for a moment. It's all true that it shouldn't matter, that the present matters. There's nothing he can change. It can't be better or worse, it just is. But this has been rolling around in his brain and driving him up the wall ever since Wash said those words.

"The only reason I'm not like him now is because everything that made me that way got ripped out of me. Makes me a different person, but a damaged one. Incomplete. If I wasn't fucked up, I'd be him, wouldn't I."

"No, you wouldn't. You'd be him decades before he became a pathetic old man that couldn't get over his dead wife." That is something she's sure of. She may not have seen much of him before the damage was done, but she knows even then he would be different from the Director.

"I'm a copy! I'm literally that man's brain turned into a complicated series of zeros and ones. I'm literally a digital version of some fuckwad's mind that got shattered by grief and torment and anger and lies. And I've been lied to ever since!" He slumps against her. "I fucking even look like him, don't I? That's why Carolina reacted the way she did when she first saw me, fucking almost took my head off, because this?" A motion to his face. "This wasn't a damn accident."

"No, it wasn't, but who gives a fuck? My face isn't an accident either, why do you think she freaked out at me, too? At least you're not a damn ghost," she replies with a slight edge to her voice. "You were based off of him, but that doesn't mean you are him."

"I would rather be a ghost. Being a motherfucking ghost was a lot easier to deal with! But then Wash had to do a stupid little speech, and then the Meta happened, and..."

Church faces her. "We were all there. Everyone but Epsilon. And it felt--you were there. You know what it felt like. And I don't know how you do this. I'd ignore it if I could, except then my voice is on the network and it isn't me, and people say my name without meaning me, and it's fucking me up, okay? I'm fucked up. I am fucking up."

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