#And Simmons - the obviously 'fail' character - was like a total badass this time

[vanlegion]

I just had a quiet 'A-ha' moment over S19, and for like, the handful of us who enjoy the whole 'Simmons is a Church theory/Au' or 'Grimmons and Chex Character Foils' introspection... I know that throw was likely (98.5%) for Donut, but now I'm kinda happy it was Simmons throwing it to Tex. Like. . . The core of this whole 'A-Ha' moment wasn't 'Oh hey, they're bonding' it was that in this one moment I realized... Oh hey, the two people always prone to 'Fail' at things just 'Fucking Won' . . . . And then viewing it as a Simulation Church is running is like 'I'm letting them have this moment' ... I think that's pretty neat.

[illumynare]

Red vs Blue fic: Gift of the Magi (4/12)

Summary: Wash has already gone through too much, been broken too often. So when they get captured by Hargrove together, Tucker figures he has one job: until the cavalry shows up, keep Wash alive and (relatively) sane. No matter the cost.

Unfortunately, Wash is just as determined to protect him.

Parings: None. Warnings: Canon-typical language, aftermath of canonical character death, psychological torture, hallucinations, hallucinated child harm, mentions of torture and suicide, fake-out character death.

Notes: Also available on AO3!

The guards come to get Tucker out of his cell, and he doesn't fight them. He never fights them. He agreed to this, and he knows what happens if he stops playing nice.

But he knows what's waiting for him in the lab, and he feels sick as they march him down the hallway. He's tired of watching his friends die. He's tired of his friends killing him. He wants to know why the fuck the others haven't come to get them yet. It's got to have been at least three days by now.

Sure, he could understand the Reds fucking around and wasting time. Simmons would need to make a spreadsheet, and Sarge would want to build a robot. Grif would just say "meh" and find another bag of cheetos. But Carolina? Being an actual badass is her entire job.

Not to mention that Tucker and Wash are supposed to be heroes of Chorus now. Rescuing them should be Kimball's priority number one.

Hargrove can't be hidden that well.

(He doesn't want to think about the last simulation, where the mercs managed to activate the Purge. It didn't touch Tucker because of the sword, so he spent hours wandering around finding body after body after body— But Tucker knows they destroyed that temple. And if Hargrove had managed to kill everyone somehow, he would have already gloated about it.)

Tucker hears voices, and suddenly he realizes that they're not taking him to the lab, they're taking him to—

—the mess hall?

It must be lunch or dinner, because it's pretty full. They don't take him to the food line, though, they take him straight to a table . . . where Wash is waiting for him.

Helmet off. Two food trays sitting in front of him.

Wash.

"What the fuck," says Tucker.

"Hargrove didn't want us meeting anywhere private," says Wash, and he's—he's not being shot or tortured or drowned, and he's not trying to kill Tucker, he's just sitting at the table looking tired and stressed like after a really bad session with the new recruits.

Tucker sits down with a thump. Everything feels vaguely unreal. He thought he was heading into another simulation, and here he is having lunch with Wash. Or dinner. Or breakfast, what the fuck ever.

"Private Tucker, status report."

"Oh my God, give that a rest," Tucker says without thinking, and then he realizes that Wash is looking at him with actual concern.

Shit.

He grabs a spoon and shovels a big mound of pudding into his mouth to give himself time to think.

He can't let Wash know what's happening. Wash will blame himself, and then try to take Tucker's place, and the whole reason Tucker got into this mess was to avoid a matinee showing of Wash 2: Now With More Crazy. 

"Well," he says, "there's this really hot scientist who can't get enough of me, if you know what I mean."

Wash goes still. "What do you mean?"

"Fuck you, I could totally be banging her!" Tucker snaps, and relaxes when he sees Wash roll his eyes.

"But you're not."

". . . But she just wants a lot of blood samples. Because of the whole alien baby thing." Tucker scoops up another mound of pudding and goes on the offensive. "What's up with you? I thought you made some kind of deal."

"I, uh. Hargrove has me . . . training his soldiers." Wash's voice cracks slightly, the way it does when he's uncomfortable, and all Tucker can feel is relief. Because awkward Wash isn't crazy Wash. Because he's obviously feeling guilty that he's cooperating with the enemy at all, but making Charon mercenaries do squats isn't going to hurt anyone, and more importantly, it's not going to hurt Wash.

Tucker managed to protect him, and he feels fiercely, desperately proud.

He fucking did that.

"So you're finally training soldiers you can actually work to death? It's like all your dreams come true." 

Wash mutters something under his breath.

"What?"

"Just . . . eat your dinner."

Okay, so it's dinner time. That's nice to know. 

There's something rubbery on his plate that looks vaguely like chicken. Tucker prods at it with his fork, and then gives it a bite.  

Synthetic protein. Bleh.

He feels a little curl of unease in his gut, and he's not sure why, because things are great. Wash is fine, and he doesn't suspect a thing, and Tucker isn't going to be strapped into that machine for another hour at least.

And then, as he swallows down synthetic protein, he realizes: he's waiting for it all to go wrong.

He's waiting for this to be another simulation. One where the pudding is poisoned, or there are snipers in the mess hall, or Wash just casually reaches over and stabs a knife between the tendons in his hand—

"This is part of being a soldier, Private," Wash says patiently. "I need to train you to resist interrogation,"  and fuck it hurts but Tucker doesn't want to fail again so he holds still while Wash shoves another knife in and it hurts it hurts and Church is screaming TUCKER IT'S NOT REAL—

"Tucker?"

Tucker almost chokes on his food and he's pretty sure his heart literally misses a beat. But he manages to swallow, and then he instantly starts babbling the first thing that comes into his head.

"Yeah, do you think the Army of Chorus gives out medals for surviving enemy captivity? Or chicks. I would take chicks instead of a medal. I asked Kimball about that after the Staff of Charon but she just said some shit about not abusing my rank."

Wash rolls his eyes. "Never mind," he says, and Tucker's heartbeat starts to slow down again.

As long as Wash is annoyed, it's okay, because that means he isn't suspicious.

It's going to be okay.

Tucker has got this.

When the guards take Tucker away again, the first thing Wash does is sigh in relief.

Because Tucker's all right. He's obviously tense, more worried than he wants to let on, but he's all right.

And he still doesn't know. 

Wash honestly wasn't sure that he'd be able to keep the secret. 

Tucker was there in those first days after Sidewinder, when Wash suddenly had no goals, no revenge to carry out, no prison to escape, and his mind started to tear itself apart because pain was the only thing that felt familiar anymore. Tucker was also there after the crash on Chorus, when Wash's brain kept stuttering between the Hand of Merope and the Mother of Invention and simulated crashes that Alpha saw. 

And somewhere along the line, Tucker decided that he was responsible for Wash's sanity. There are times Wash still doesn't understand why, any more than he understands why Caboose insisted that they keep him and call him Church—

he choked on the name in those first weeks, he told Caboose to shut up again and again until Tucker shoved him against the wall and shouted you shut the fuck up, but Caboose kept calling him Church, Church, we're best friends, aren't we, Church? until Wash said yes because he had used up all his defiance on the Director and prison and the Meta, and he was willing to let these people remake him into whatever they wanted, but all they did was sing him happy birthday, and wake him from his nightmares, and call him Church until the name stopped hurting and for the first time in years he felt like he was truly Wash

—the point is, Tucker has gotten far too good at telling when something is wrong. Wash was terrified that he'd take one look and simply know about the cold, foreign weight squatting at the back of his skull. That maybe he'd guess what Wash has started thinking about failsafes and self-destructs—that even if they're rescued, maybe there's no getting the Mark IV out and this time Wash is finally fucked up beyond repair. 

But he didn't. He didn't guess, and he's not hurt. Wash has never, ever been so glad to hear Tucker ramble about his chances of banging somebody inappropriate.

If Wash can just keep Tucker safe, then it will all be worth it. Even if he doesn't come back from this, it will still be worth it.

The thought gives him strength over the next couple days, as he waits for Hargrove to send him on his next mission. He's a little frightened by how easily he starts hoping for the mission, and not their friends—but keeping Hargrove happy is all Wash can do right now.

He can't afford any mistakes.

So he practices with the Mark IV again and again, flips the safety off again and again, lets it spin him through maneuvers and fire his guns and throw his knives. He can do this. He has to do this.

And then finally Hargrove sends him out.

It's the same instructions as last time: infiltrate, and download information from a computer. But this time it's a military base, not far from the ruins of Armonia. Wash was there just a few weeks ago, which means he knows something about where the guards are going to be.

He also knows how unlikely it is that he'll be able to get in and out without hurting anyone or getting caught.

He can't get caught. Hargrove made that very clear: he fails, and Tucker pays the price.

Wash doesn't want to hurt anyone. The soldiers on Chorus trust him, less than the Reds and Blues do but more than anyone should. He doesn't want to go back to being that cold-blooded soldier who would shoot anyone to get what he wanted.

He will, if that's the only way to keep his team alive. Wash isn't proud of that, but it's a fact.

This is also a fact: he will try as hard as he can to find another way.

Several flash-bang grenades and two fire alarms later, Wash thinks he may be able to pull this off. The base is halfway evacuated, and he's at the computer, watching the information download. If his luck just holds a few more minutes, he can get out the way he came and get back to the Pelican, another mission complete.

He thinks briefly of trying to use the computer to send a message. But he's willing to bet that the Mark IV is recording everything he sees. Wash was able to get away with dropping the knife—he was careful not to look at what he was doing—but if he sends an email, Hargrove will probably find out. And there will be consequences.

Wash just has to go back, and trust in their friends to find them.

"Hello," says Caboose, from right behind him.

Time slows down.

It's like the moment that Epsilon tried to kill himself in Wash's head. In those last seconds, their brains meshed, thoughts aligned, and Wash experienced time at the speed of a dying AI, lightspeed compared to human thought but an agonizing crawl for Epsilon as subroutines returned ERROR, ERROR, END OF FILE. Wash listened to his own heartbeat and heard each weary thud minutes apart, and the two of them wished together that it would all stop.

It's like that now.

Thud, he understands that Caboose is there with him, that there are probably more soldiers nearby, that this is a trap and he might be saved—but Tucker's not here, and they'll kill him if Wash doesn't come back—

Thud, and he's turning, and he know he needs to stop this, stop himself, but there's no time. There's no time and he's not the one raising his pistol, it's the Mark IV moving him and it says, Target acquired.

He doesn't hear his next heartbeat.

Because the gun fires.

The gun fires and Wash can almost see the path the bullet takes through the air, with the same remorseless clarity that Alpha saw every one of his mistakes. He sees and he sees and he can do nothing, and it's like his nightmares about shooting Donut, knowing what's about to happen and not able to stop it—

Why did you do that? What's wrong with you?

Then there's blood spattered around the hole in the visor of Caboose's helmet, and Caboose is falling backward as the Mark IV drones, Target eliminated.

I was just following orders.