churbooseanon

And so we see the repercussions of Wash’s decisions last chapter, and just why Florida wasn’t on the MoI during the break-in.

For Every Action - Part Seventeen

Washington had grown to dislike the color white. Not that it had taken too much effort with just how over abundant the color was around him. If there was a way to be bathed entirely in a color, Wash was on the verge of that with white. From the walls to the ceiling to the floor and right down to the bed that had been recovered with the sheets sewn into place this time.

The thing was, he didn’t hate the color white. The way it was being misused here was headache inducing, the monotony it invested in the world around him was frustrating, and there was nothing he wanted to do more than get a box of paints and splash them around the room, though he knew he’d feel guilty about it later. He didn’t hate the color white. At this point he was coming to reserve that dubious honor for a different color entirely.

After all, white was the color of his captivity, but the color of his captors was decidedly blue.

Blue in the phantom light of Epsilon out of the corner of his vision when he wasn’t expecting it. Blue in the color of Abernathy’s eyes. Blue in the ever-present and menacing force that was Florida.

Since the brief visit of the Director, Wash could barely turn around without seeing Agent Florida.

His arm was a tangle of lines and feeds when his eyes fluttered open. They were the first thing he saw. A nutrient IV, which implied he had been out longer than he would have liked. A sedative line. Another one with medication that he read the name of off of the bag it lead to, and the part of him that was and wasn’t Epsilon immediately returned that it was an anti-seizure medication. That, at least, explained something.

None of it explained the helmeted Freelancer sitting in a plastic chair at the side of his bed. The one that was staring pointedly down at him, seeming to wait for something. Florida… The very thought of the other man sent a fearful tremor down Wash’s spine, because he knew. Dear god did he know.

He held very, very still as Florida moved forward and held down his arm at a point halfway between his wrist and elbow. Watched as slowly, delicately, Florida removed line after line, letting little points of blood well up on Wash’s arm until he had them all out. Then a few pieces of gauze were retrieved from somewhere and pressed firmly on the small points of blood.

“Morning, sleepy-head,” Florida had cheerfully greeted him. “You gave us all quite a scare.”

Wash swallowed his fear, met Florida’s attention as levelly as he could. Another secret he didn’t dare let slip.

There were few people who survived knowing what he did about one Butch Flowers.

Very suddenly Wash found himself regretting embracing everything Epsilon had left him.

They wouldn’t give him a break from the presence of Agent Florida. Every morning Florida was the one who came in—not the orderlies—with his breakfast. Florida shared lunch with him, then lingered for the interviews with Abernathy. The blue clad Freelancer would disappear for a few hours then, leaving Wash alone until dinner, where he returned with the door hissing open.

He was always cheerful. Always pleasant. Always a perfectly reasonable person and considerate toward Washington and his ‘delicate situation.’ He prompted Wash for stories about his lovers as any close friend might, and was never offended when he was rebuffed. Florida offered to see about getting him a fuzzy blanket to add to the bed, something in a 'more appropriate color’ to give him a break from the drab. The implication was always there, though, in the knitting Florida was working on at meals. It was always a stretch of tan bordering on golden-brown, and a deep, rich purple.

Hell, Florida had even offered to help him keep in shape when Wash had redonned his armor after the medical equipment had been hurried away after he had awoke. Maybe he had read Wash’s armoring as a protective measure, maybe an attempt to hide things, or maybe he just sat back and smiled because Wash was acting like a Freelancer for all that he still insisted on being treated like a civilian.

Wash had taken Florida up on the offer on the second day back on his feet. It was the first time the two of them had matched each other since beta group had joined alpha. His body remembered how Florida fought back then, how easily he could dominate the older Freelancer. Yet his mind could remember watching video feeds of Flowers at work and he had to keep himself from reacting to how good he now knew Florida to be. Florida hadn’t seemed to care either way, and had displayed the skill he never hinted at as a Freelancer, taking and pinning Wash in three moves.

They both knew it was a quiet way of Florida telling him just who was in control. And as much as Wash hated to admit it, it wasn’t him.

Neither of them had commented on how easily Florida had taken him. Didn’t talk about how easy it would be for Florida to take one of those knitting needles and jam it through Wash’s throat if he hadn’t taken to wearing the nanomesh undersuit, and how he could probably still do it then.

They kept to safer topics. Memories of beta training from Wash. Veiled references to Wash’s polygamous relationship from Florida. Discussions on how bets had played out on the Mother of Invention. Never the Director. Never Epsilon.

Never the fact that Wash spent the better part of his day cooped up in a room with one of the most deadly assassins Earth and the Sol System colonies knew.

The tell-tale hiss of the door found Wash twisting his head from the ceiling toward the door, catching the familiar and loathed flash of blue that was Florida striding into the room with dinner. Abernathy had already come and gone for the day, his morning pummeling from Florida was long since over, and any semblance of privacy he would get until he begged for privacy for his evening shower was abandoned as Wash pushed himself off the bed.

“You’re in for quite a treat this evening, Wash,” Florida greeted him as he crossed to the table and deposited his heavily laden tray. They always sent enough for three now, and Florida did quite well at putting away what Wash didn’t touch. “Apparently they got in a shipment of apples and made a pie just for us! Hope you like apples.”

They both knew he did, and Wash didn’t bother to point that out as he pushed himself off the bed. As an after thought he thumbed the clasps on his helmet and tossed it to the bed. There was no point to bringing it over for now. He couldn’t eat in it, and Florida always got so offended when he tried. Yet he stood back and watched, as he always did, until Florida removed his own helmet and positively beamed at him with pleasure.

“Any fruit juice?” Wash asked as he moved to join Florida at the table, pretending he was completely fine with the fact that the man he was going to share the meal with was a murderer.

Not that Wash’s hands were entirely clean, especially considering what he’d learned from the shattered and scattered pieces of Epsilon in his mind. But the innocent blood on his hands he hadn’t knowingly spilled. Florida…

His record had nearing a hundred confirmed kills under the name of Butch Flowers alone, and another sixty-two suspected kills before one even began to consider the aliases he was suspected of using. His preferred method was up close and personal kills, ranging from the simple knife across the throat to the more elegant poison tipped needle jabbed into the base of the skull, to actual strangulation. Apparently he was quite open to suggestions from his clients, and took a strange pleasure in spending time on more relaxed assignments growing close to his target, friendly even, before killing them.

Alpha and the Director had never been completely certain how the infamous Butch Flowers had become a member of Project Freelancer. They had never actively recruited the assassin. Apparently Flowers had just appeared in the Director’s private quarters on the Mother of Invention three days before the alpha group had been brought to the ship, dropped a file on his chest while he lay in bed, and called it his 'resume for acceptance into your interesting little program.’

The woman who had originally been recruited for the designation of Florida never arrived for training. Nor had her body been found. According to the most recent records Epsilon had she had just mysteriously dropped off the face of the colony she had been stationed at a week before Flowers had invaded the Director’s room. Alpha posited that the woman had been a target of the assassin for one reason or another, and while cleaning up after himself Flowers had found the letter from the Director regarding her transfer, and he had looked into the project himself using whatever contacts he had to have in the UNSC. Something had motivated Flowers to join them, and the file he had provided had been too impressive for the Director to pass on.

From there it hadn’t taken much effort for Florida to become the eyes and ears of the Director among the Freelancers.

Eyes and ears alarmingly turned toward him, the one with the most dangerous secrets.

“Yeah, I got you grape,” Florida happily announced as he pointed toward the plastic box on the edge of the tray. “I know you don’t like it, but apparently it’s really easy to ship, so I guess we’ll have to deal with it.”

Wash forced a smile as he sat and evaluated the meal before him. Watery beef stew, crumbling bread, salad he’d only been given a spork for—forks had become a 'sometimes’ utensil after Florida had appeared—a bowl of fruit salad, and a plate of mashed potatoes. Were it not for the fact that everything was present in abundant quantities Wash might have rolled his eyes. As it was he knew he would at least be full when it was over.

“I thought you said something about pie,” Wash accused him as he moved to pour some grape juice into one of his paper cups. “I don’t see…”

“You can’t have your dessert until you’ve finished your dinner,” Florida chided him with a brief wave of a buttery spoon. Amazing how Florida managed to make it look almost threatening before he returned his attention to buttering a slice of the crumbling bread. “I asked them to leave it covered just outside the door. I’ll bring it in when you’ve eaten enough.”

“I don’t need another nurse, Florida,” he sighed as he leaned back in his chair to down half the cup of juice. If nothing else he had to give the Project this: he got far more regular amounts of genuine fruit products than he’d ever had as a UNSC recruit or on half the colonies his parents had been stationed on.

“Not being a nurse. Being a friend. Friends don’t let friends eat dessert first.”

“York and North never told me that,” Wash offered, and as he expected Florida’s eyes moved from his bread buttering to Wash’s face. Of course the look he was given was one of friendly interest, and not one of a man spying on him, but really, how could he be sure of the difference?

“Well, lovers are supposed to spoil you,” Florida countered with a smile that made him look like a man eager for a juicy piece of gossip rather than some lever he could use against Wash. “Especially when you’re younger than them.”

“I guess,” Wash agreed before refilling his cup and taking one of the large plastic bowls filled with stew for himself. “But I don’t think I’m that much younger than them.”

It was a lie, plain and simple. He knew exactly how much younger he was than Miles and Nic down to the day. He hadn’t known before, none of them had really thought of their birthdays as important events anymore. But Alpha had known their personnel files forward and backward with his eyes closed, and Epsilon had known because Alpha had known, and Wash knew because Epsilon had. Everyone’s personnel files were up there in his head, and he knew them down to the last punctuation marks. Only Maine’s and Florida’s had substantial gaps in them. And sometimes the levels of detail in them were terrifying.

Honestly, he now knew more about Miles Cunningham and Nicolas Howe since waking with Florida over him than he had ever thought to learn. Maybe the dossiers hadn’t mentioned that Miles couldn’t resist a heist movie or that Nic’s favorite color was the shade of purple the mountains near his home turned at sunset, but they listed things he should have known. Miles was allergic to pineapple. Nic was a very capable motorcyclist. They even knew the secrets the other two wouldn’t tell him. Like how York had gotten the burn that dominated the better part of his right calf, or the fact that Nic’s mother had abandoned their family shortly after the twins were born, leaving them to be raised by their father alone.

“Oh come on now, you had to guess,” Florida pressed with a smile. “I mean, York’s already showing his age with all those wrinkles on his forehead.”

“It was just sex,” Wash insisted, the same line he’d been feeding Florida for two days when he had realized it was pointless to deny it out of hand anymore. Florida had offered too many details, to many tidbits, for Wash not to concede sex with the older Freelancers. Still, he was trying to keep them from being used against him, or the other way around.

They both knew it was an empty ploy. Wash’s reaction to Florida’s original question had been too angry, too passionate, too impulsive for a casual fling.

Florida was at least polite enough to let him pretend he hadn’t done that.

“Speaking of… Come on, Wash, you’ve got to tell me something.”

“I really don’t,” Wash disagreed before scooping a spoonful of stew into his mouth to dodge the question.

Florida smiles and it was the same smile as on the tape with a middle-aged, dark haired man standing over a body. His hands hang loosely at his sides as he looks down. Then the man twists around, looks directly at the camera. His expression is utterly blank, utterly unmoved by the garroting the camera had caught moments earlier, by the struggle of the woman on the floor who had tried so hard to live. Then, suddenly it was there. A wide smile with the faintest suggestion of teeth. Eyes squeezing toward closed in pleasure. A hand comes up and fingers wiggle a cheerful little wave. A full ten seconds of that before the other hand quickly comes up and under the black formal coat—they’d been out on a date together, a nice charity ball that he’d chosen a three piece suit for—and there was a gun in his hand. The video turned to static nanoseconds after the trigger was squeezed, fingers still wiggling.

Wash hid his shock with another spoonful of stew and a careful schooling of his expression. The flashes were less common since his 'attack.’ Since he had welcomed the fragments of Epsilon into himself. He could still feel them there, just under the surface of his thoughts, begging to jump out at him. All he had to do was press for some piece of information and they were there, as detailed as ever, but somehow distant. Information waiting to be accessed, yet rarely overwhelming him. It was different, still strange, and all around more pleasant than the random flashes. Yes, he had to struggle to sort the information he wanted out from the mass of memories that now filled his head, and the dreams were worse than ever before, but it was easier to exist from sleep to sleep.

That didn’t make the flashes that he got any less disturbing.

“What’s with that face?” Florida asked, concern in his voice.

“Not enough pepper. Pass the shaker?” Wash covered, and Florida stayed cheerful when he did as he asked.

Florida pretended not to think Washington was lying, and Wash pretended not to read that awareness in the flash in Florida’s eyes.

It was all very polite and civil.

And insanely dangerous.

* * * * * *

Nights were routines in their own right. Florida swept out after cheerfully bidding him good night, dinner tray in his hands and his knitting tucked under his arm. Their conversations would have played out hours before and Florida would play at teaching Wash how to knit or the proper way to set a table, or discuss the finer points of one piece of artillery over another. In the end Wash would beg off and insist that he needed to shower, and Florida would nod and treat the statement as if it was Wash saying good night rather than dismissing him to gain something very tangentially resembling privacy.

Showers were when Wash let himself cry. The fact that it had never been brought up in any 'therapy’ sessions suggested the bathroom wasn’t monitored as closely as everywhere else, but Wash didn’t run that risk without caution. He tilted his head up into the stream of water, let it wash over his face, and kept his breathing as even as possible while he wept. Wept for what might happen to Miles. For Nic being abandoned on the Mother of Invention to the will of the Director. For the fact that he’d given up hope on leaving this place. For Alpha and the AI fragments. For the pain of a broken man who had lost his wife to the military and then sold his soul to try and call her back from beyond death. For the poor little red haired girl who had grown up into steel and ice because her mother had died, her father had all but abandoned her, and her only chance to be close to him was to follow his painful dream and still never be appreciated.

He cried because both of Wyoming’s parents had been killed in the glassing of a colony, and he’d only survived because they had forced him onto an escape shuttle that couldn’t carry them. He cried for Utah’s failed bubble shield and Georgia’s pointless death to jetpacks that could have been better tested. He cried for the echo of a soldier who had already given her life and had been dragged back to do it again. Cried for C.T. trying to save them all and him being too stupid to see it. For the scar on South’s cheek put there when a boy at her school had tried to force himself on her and how she had never told her brother and had never been the same since.

He wept for Arizona and the Virginias and Rhode who had all tried so hard and had been doomed from the start.

He wept for the AI fragment who had, for just a brief moment, been a part of him and had settled warmly into the open welcome and joy he had greeted it with before it had broken under the weight of the memories it bore.

When he turned the shower off the tears stopped as well.

Wash hated to sleep with wet hair so the next step was always sitting himself down at the table with the stack of paper and mechanical pencil they had given him after waking to Florida. He wrote letters every night. Letters to the nice old lady who had lived down the block from him when he was growing up and let him play with her pet cats. Letters to the corporal he’d met during basic training who had happily taken his kitten back to her boyfriend when he’d received the letter informing him of his redeployment to a planet far away from the front lines. A letter to York telling him about other movies he remembered from his childhood. A letter to his parents who he hadn’t seen in years and wouldn’t again. There was always a letter for North about inconsequential things. One for Maine with other kinds of candy he remembered and thought the man might enjoy treating his not-so-secret sweet-tooth to. A letter to Carolina asking her to look out for the others. Another for Wyoming with all the worst knock-knock jokes he could come up with. His letter to South usually turned into cursing just because she always told him curses from him sounded like a puppy trying to howl and so made her laugh.

He stayed there long past when his hair dried, writing letter after letter until his arm almost felt like it wanted to fall off. When he was done he would shred them and leave them in a confetti pile on the table. It was petulance more than anything else. None of them would ever be sent on, and he was certain they were reading each and every one. Which of course meant he made someone miserable every morning when the pile of scraps was delivered and ordered to be put together. Still, he did it every night, and every morning when he woke there was a fresh pile of paper, a new mechanical pencil, and no comments.

At least he had managed to confirm that they pumped something into the air while he slept so they could tend to his room.

After that he moved to the bed, stripped his armor off, and turned to whatever book he was working on. At the moment it was some silly hopeful science fiction story now, about a human empire that dominated the galaxy rather than fighting tooth and nail to avoid extinction.

He read to the point of exhaustion, until his body screamed it needed sleep. Then and only then Wash gave himself over to the dreams. To the flashes of Allison and Leonard and Charlotte. To the torture of Alpha that replayed in his mind every single night. To memories of his body tangled together with those of Miles and Nic. To every last second of Epsilon’s memory and his own, arranging and rearranging themselves in his head, trying to find places to fit, trying to find ways to fit together.

Every night his head tore itself apart and put itself together again anew.

The human mind wasn’t supposed to be able to access so many memories. There was a reason humans had evolved to forget. Since Epsilon, David had been denied that peace. And still he’d managed to repress so much.

Maybe he’d made a mistake in accepting Epsilon into himself, in finally embracing the fact that this jumble of man and machine and echo of a man and memory of a shadow were what he had become. Maybe it hadn’t stabilized him. Maybe he’d finally gone insane. Because every single night his mind tore itself apart and glued itself back together into a new monster he had to spend his first waking hours sorting out, and it hurt.

And somehow, despite everything, he still couldn’t find it in him to hate Epsilon.

Even the part of him that was Epsilon was certain it would have been easier if he could.