ghostthatlingers | Sanctum IC Contact

"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."

"I know you're fucked up. You're as fucked up as I am, why do you think I love you?" Not really the best time to say that, but she's never been one to throw the word around and it feels like he needs to hear an affirmation that someone cares.

"Look, Epsilon will probably hang out with the other agents. I don't think you'll have to worry about being around him much or dealing with someone calling him by your name."

No, now is probably one of the better times to say it. Other than, y'know, all the time, which isn't gonna happen. Actually...he doesn't think he's ever actually heard the words come out of her mouth before. It had always been that unspoken feeling that was obvious, and--maybe that was just his memory fucking up? Had she said it before? Had he ever said it to her?

"Wow, I must sound like the end of the world for you to say that." And after a moment, he cracks a laugh--actually like something cracks, because it isn't funny at all. Their world had been ending. All up until that bright light. Man, this is probably inappropriate. Maybe she doesn't get the irony.

(Wait, is that irony, or just sad coincidence?)

"Sorry," he says, clearing his throat of the last remnants of chuckling that want to escape, "sorry. I always figured you loved me for my dashing good looks and stunning personality." A joke. Not so much on him, but they'd never actually gotten the chance to, had they? Hell, neither of them had ever really had bodies before. Clashing with the memories he thinks he has. She was beautiful, just like this, but how could he remember that if he'd never seen her face before?

She rolls her eyes and shoves his shoulder, harder than she meant to. His poor attempt at a joke would have seen fine if it wasn't accompanied by a laugh. His memories might be screwed up, but she didn't think they were that screwed up. Least he could do was reciprocate when she got mushy as shit at him.

"Yeah, ha ha. Real funny. Good to know where you stand on that. If you're going to be an ass about it, then you can sleep downstairs from now on."

"What--no, come on, I just--end of the world. It was funny. I mean, okay, getting erased by an EMP blast isn't actually funny. It wasn't funny, but I laughed anyway. It's a fucking weird night if you haven't noticed." He scrubs at his face like maybe he can rewind this and not fuck that up. Fucking fuck.

"You know how I feel about you, okay? I was gonna fucking marry you, and if that's not love, then I've got it all ass backwards."

She frowns and suddenly, the floor is very interesting to stare at. She knows he's always referred to her as 'girlfriend' and their relationship has been rocky at best, but he seems to be trying to figure this crap out now. Time to see if a bit of honesty will help or freak him out.

"You do realize he and Allison were married, right?"

He furrows his brow, opens his mouth, really wants to ask 'what does that have to do with anything' but thinks better of it. Because it's them-but-not.

"So...what are you saying, that we're already married?"

That's what he got out of that? She looks horrified for a brief second before wiping it off her face in a quick shake of her head. That's almost as bad as him laughing at her. "No, I just thought you should know if you're going to spout out crap about having wanted to marry me."

"Wow, that's not fucking mixed signals or anything. Do you want me to not give a fuck about them because they're not us, or do you want me to give a fuck because we're them?" He narrows his eyes. What's the point in bringing it up, then? It doesn't change the fact that he planned what he did. "You're not comparing me to him, are you? That I feel this way because of what he felt?"

Oh. That might, in fact, be it.

"Not... exactly," she grumbles. Ugh, she should not have said anything. "Just that you probably wanted to get married at least because they were."

"I didn't even remember anything about that! I still don't--why would I have known something like that if I don't--"

He doesn't want to be angry, not with her, not after the immense fuckup he just did, but he's not kidding about the shitty mixed signals. "So I'm nothing like him and nothing about him and me should matter, but oh, I should know that he was married to the woman you're not, so I'm like him? That isn't fair. And I don't mean that in a life's not fair way, I mean that in a you can't have it both ways way."

Church spins around in a huff, takes a few pacing steps, then comes right back. "What about you? If I was gonna marry you before Omega and the Freelancers turned you into a bigger rampaging bitch than you already were because of him, maybe you love me because she loved him, huh? Is that how this works?"

"I don't fucking know! I don't know what to tell you, Church. You two completely different people, but we have some of his fucking jumbled up memories floating in our heads, okay? I thought you'd want to know." It's too late for this shit.

Her arms are folded over her chest now and it's hard not to instinctively close up as this heats up into a fight. "I don't know how this works. You haven't been dealing with this until tonight."

"You don't know." Is that she doesn't know how this works, or is that she doesn't know if her feelings for him are really hers?

"Tex, we shared part of our lives together, and it wasn't always fun, and it wasn't always perfect, and then you joined the Freelancers, and everything went to hell. And..." He brings the bottle to his lips but doesn't drink, frustrated. "And none of that actually happened, did it? I never actually met any of them. Did--did Sidewinder happen, or did I just make that up, too? What do you remember about us?"

"Church, everything started at Freelancer. You were made there the same as I was." God, are they really having this conversation? She wishes they weren't, it's too early and she knows it's not going to end well.

"I have the memories he gave me, gave us, and then I was there, in the Project with the others. It doesn't change any of the crap I said before about how I feel, okay?"

"Me not remembering any of that, me being split apart into a bunch of little components, that doesn't change how you feel at all? You've been dealing with this all alone." And he's a fucking shitheel for dumping this all on her, but who else is going to even remotely understand? It's not like he wanted to have this conversation.

"Yeah, and trying to keep your ass safe while I was at it. See how well that worked," she grumbles. "If the way you are now was a deal breaker, do you think I would have stuck around that canyon with your idiot team so long?"

"All this time, we weren't a thing not just because I made at least half of my life up, but because you were just...trying to watch out for me. You always knew right from the start, but you never said--anything. You never said a god damn word." He runs a hand through his hair, rubbing at his head. Everything hurts, but he can't just drop it. "But that was still you trying to protect me, because you knew I'd act like this, or not believe you like with Wash. There was never really an us. You just...went along with what I said to protect me. From myself."

"I saw how messed up you were after his... experiments. It was better to not tell you. You picked up the pieces and made something new, you didn't need to relive the bullshit." She's searching his eyes now for some kind of hint of what she could say to make this better. Her next words hurt and she's not sure if it would improve things or make them worse, but he's hung up on everything their relationship hasn't been.

"Church, if this is too much, we can stop."

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