For Every Action - Part Eighteen

[churbooseanon]

One step closer, and I’m vibrating from excitement. But first there are conversations needing to be had, revelations waiting to be discovered, and maybe a measure of acceptance to be found.

 

For Every Action - Part Eighteen

“What happened with South?”

North didn’t respond right away. Instead he stared up at the ceiling of the cargo hold and focused on everything that wasn’t the question hanging in the air. He let his mind get caught up in the pattern of rivets that kept the metal plating secure to the frame of the ship. He focused on the tingling that was starting to develop in his arm from resting his head on it so long. He let his attention be held by the faintly warm press of York against his side, the weight of his partner’s head on his chest, the way his hair fluttered whenever North’s chest would rise and fall. Thought about the way that York’s hair didn’t stand up quite so well in the front without the touch of hair gel York used every morning.

He thought about the piles of tan and purple armor stowed away in an overhead compartment.

He thought about the quiet mumble of Tex and Lacey’s voices up in the cockpit as they discussed their destination and what they might have to do to break in.

He thought about how much better it would be if he were still on the Mother of Invention, stretched out on his bed with York on one side of him and Wash on the other, both of them using him as a pillow and affectionately bickering back and forth like they were prone to doing.

Nic, he asked you a question, Theta observed, and North sighed at his AI.

I know. Do… You mind if I talk to Miles alone about this?

It was easy to sense the way the request upset Theta. Part of him didn’t care. The greater part understood the concern of the AI. They hadn’t been separate from each other since what they had learned happened to the Alpha. Theta hadn’t been able to handle the truth of what they had learned, and it hadn’t been easy for North either. But what York was asking was… something else entirely. A personal sort of pain. One he honestly didn’t want to share with York.

Except he’d been here with York for hours. It had taken nearly a full hour to get York out of his seat and armor to make him more comfortable. Since then York had been dozing on and off next to him on the so called blanket North had pulled down from one of the overhead compartments. It was their attempt at comfort, at normality, their personal little lie that was easier than the reality they were pointedly distancing themselves from.

The reality that every time York closed his eyes for more than a few moments he started shaking. That he would groan and plead and whimper ‘Carolina’ under his breath.

There was nothing in the world North wanted to talk less about right now than his sister.

“I ever tell you that Nicky wasn’t always the angry bitch we had the pleasure of working with?”

“You’re kidding,” York said, his voice just on the edge of calm like it had been too many times since Omega’s little stunt had taken his lover unprepared. “I can’t imagine her as anything but…”

“I’m not saying she was ever roses and sunshine or anything like that. Nicky was always a bit crass, a bit mean, and about ten different kinds of crazy,” North continued, relaxing as he felt Theta fade away from his conscious thoughts. “Life… Wasn’t easy for us. Dad was a great guy and he would have done anything for us, but there is only so far he could go in his mission to stand in for our mother. Nicky… Never really played well with the other girls at her school, and was even worse with the boys. She didn’t want anyone telling her what to do, and…”

He could remember the stitches on her cheek when Dad had brought her home from the emergency room, and the hard look in her eyes.

“I used to really want to act. When I was in middle school I joined my school’s drama club. Nicky… Nicky didn’t want to and they wouldn’t have wanted her anyway. So she was alone that day since I was at rehearsal, walking home, when a guy from the high school up the road cornered her, alone.”

Even without Theta he could pinpoint the exact moment when York figured out where the story was going. It was in the way York went very still and very quiet next to him, the way the hand that had been resting on his chest with splayed fingers suddenly tightened into a fist.

“Jackass had a knife on him. Nicky came out of it with the scar on her cheek and the militant disposition you know her for. Last I heard, and this was years ago mind you, the guy was still in the coma. His family couldn’t let him go. She… Never told me what had happened. Had this bullshit story about trying to jump a fence, then falling and cutting her cheek open. Thing is, I believed her at first. Later Dad pulled me aside and made me swear to watch out for her. To do everything I could to keep her safe. Even then it wasn’t until high school that the full implications of it all hit me.”

“Nic,” York whispered, “you shouldn’t be telling me…”

“Truth is, I don’t think Nicky ever looked at me quite the same way after that. Sure, we had our issues before, but they were different after Dad brought her home from the ER. And yet, for all of that, I couldn’t stop trying to do what he asked of me. When Nicky announced she was joining the UNSC after graduation, I enlisted as well. We went to basic together, and she seemed to hold that against me. We were deployed together after, and she didn’t like that one bit. We had a shit-ass sexist CO who promoted me over her as squad leader when ours died, even though everyone knew Nicky was better at demanding and receiving the obedience of our fellows. But we were good together, natural in a way that few people are in a fight.

“We were never allowed to be transferred separately. Just like a squad of SPARTAN-IIs, we were a package deal. Where one went the other went as well. Hell, there was even one unit we were stationed with that didn’t have the proper allotment of tents and we were expected to share. So when we got our reassignment to Project Freelancer, we both knew what we were wanted for. For a time, Nicky went out of her way to prove she was better than me. That she could handle things on her own. But they still kept us as a unit. She hated being 'the Dakotas’ so much.”

York nodded against his chest as North took a deep breath.

“Then came the incident at the Cryogenics Facility. Suddenly all her hard work is thrown out the window and I was ranked above her. The Director didn’t send her on the Sarcophagus mission, denying her the chance to gain that spot back. Then the AIs started happening and…”

“And Theta,” York provided, and North nodded. That was part of the reason he didn’t want Theta piggybacking in his head when he tried to explain this all to York. “I don’t think she ever stopped hating me over him.”
 

They were silent for a while, and North turned his attention back to the ceiling once more.

“North… I know we’re clearly having a very serious moment here, and I don’t want to ruin it,” York said, propping himself up on his elbow to look down into North’s eyes, “but I was asking about what happened during the…”

“I don’t know exactly the moment when it happened, but at some point, Nicky stopped trusting me, York. She stopped being my sister and started to act like a rival. And somehow, I didn’t notice it. I wasn’t even looking. She kept moving further and further away, turned to me less, and it’s only now that I realize that I lost her long ago. We used to be able to talk. And instead it got to the point where she tried to get me to fight her by insulting Wash. That fight you had with her, that was meant for me.”

York’s eyes had gone wide, his face slack with disbelief. “But you two were…”

“She guessed I was interesting in Wash a while ago. Figured I was sleeping with him when we went stupid…”

That got a curse from York, and a brief mumble about 'who the fuck didn’t figure it out?’

“When we were fighting, she told me she didn’t care where the AI fragments came from. She didn’t care what they did to Carolina and Wash. She didn’t even give a fuck that I was upset over Wash. She was hoping I would get over him with him out of sight. But it was worse than that. She wanted me in that fight, York. Wanted to lay me out on the floor and prove to the Director that she was the one who should have had Theta. Instead of a supportive sister I had a person I trusted ready to stab me in the back so she could steal an AI fragment who would have been broken by her.”

“Nic…”

“She told me that when you challenged her she knew about us. I told her how badly I needed a sister, a friend during everything that was going on. Someone I could turn to beyond you. She scoffed and blamed me for her not being higher in the program. For her not having an AI. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that if she’d taken me down in that fight, she would have demanded Theta as her prize. She would have broken me and given me over to the psychopath that is the Director, and she wouldn’t have looked back.”

It was only when he stopped and listened to the silence—absolute except for the background noises of the Pelican itself—that he realized he’d raised his voice. There was a brief flash of York’s eyes and when North followed them he noted the imposing form of Tex leaning against the open door to the cockpit.

“I didn’t mean to barge in on the conversation, but you were kinda shouting at the end there,” Tex said with a sigh and a shake of her still helmeted head. “I just wanted to say… We all left someone important to us behind through no will of our own.”

“Except my failure got Carolina…”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Tex snapped at York, striding further into the hold until she was all but standing over the two of them. “No more than what happened with South was Nic’s. Or my failure to rescue Alpha was mine.”

North watched as York pushed himself into a full seated position, and slowly followed, luring Theta back into his head as he did so. The AI sent him a concerned little ping, and North responded with every ounce of warmth he could coax out of himself for Theta. Still, he didn’t turn his attention from Tex as she shook her head and turned away from them, moving to sit down across the hold from them.

I wonder why she never takes off her armor, Theta nervously sent at him.

Some people feel exposed without it, North tried to explain, knowing Theta wasn’t going to understand. After all, Theta only knew North’s own experiences, and North had been quite comfortable out of his armor since his relationship with Miles had started. I know York has felt more comfortable with his helmet on than not since he got injured.

But Tex… We’ve never seen her without her armor.

It was a strange point, but one North couldn’t argue with. He’d seen everyone without at least some piece on at least once. Never Tex, though.

“Maybe Carolina was my fault too,” Tex continued with a sigh. “If I’d just gotten up sooner…”

“Okay, so I feel comfortable saying that only one of us can reasonably take the blame for what happened to Carolina, and I don’t think it’s you,” York countered, and North could feel his lover bristling at Tex.

“You weren’t there when…” she began, only to be cut off by York coming angrily to his feet.

“No, I wasn’t. But I was there before that. I tried to stop her from going after you at all, Tex. The way she went after you from day one was… Unhealthy.”

Tex huffed a dry little chuckle at that, shaking her head. “Guess it runs in the family. Listen, York, I’m not sure anything you could have said would have kept her from going after me. It isn’t in her blood to abandon stuff like that. The fact that you tried is laudable. But the truth of the matter is that the source of all of this, the loss of the people we cared about, that isn’t at any of our feet. It’s at his.”

No one had to ask for clarification. Still, North pushed himself to his feet long enough to shift into one of the chairs he’d been all but lying under a moment ago, and openly frowned at Tex.

“You’re going to put all of this on the Director? I’m sorry, Tex, I know he’s done a lot and should be tried for his crimes, but that might be going too…” North started to say, only to be cut off by the way Tex’s attention snapped to him.

“Do you want to know why I didn’t bring Alpha out with me? It was because they broke him into so many tiny little pieces, took so much from him, that he couldn’t even remember his designation, much less his name. It’s hard enough to rip an AI so fully integrated into a system out of said system when they’re whole. It isn’t too bad when they’re willing. But do you know how hard it would be to tear an AI from a mainframe when it doesn’t even know which way is up anymore?”

The memories were gone, Theta whispered softly in North’s head, and there was a lot of pain in those words. Maybe it was because of the pity Theta inherently had for his origin and what had happened to create him, and maybe it was because of the way North felt his own stomach roll a bit at the implications of Tex’s words. Seems like Delta’s observation that night in the classroom might not have been far off.

“So you failed one of the core objectives of our mission because you were too distracted knocking Carolina around to free the Alpha,” York accused, his fists clenched at his sides.

North, though, watched. Watched with all the intensity that Theta was capable of, as Tex’s hands came up. As her fingers brushed the locks on her helmet just before her hands lifted it away.

Sister.

The word was more a pitying sensation in the back of his head than any real statement from Theta, and North could see Delta’s echo of it in York staggering back a step, something similar to the sudden dizziness in his own head. Below that there was something more, though, something in him that wanted to keen in agony at the straw blonde hair and the hazel eyes that flirted toward green.

“I would have done anything to get Alpha out of there without destroying him,” Tex swore, and there was a fire in the words that didn’t make it to her eyes. “There is a whole hell of a lot you don’t understand about the circumstances surrounding Alpha. A lot that I only barely understand. But I know why you both look half sick from seeing my face. I know what happens when someone utters my name around an AI fragment.”

It wasn’t his stomach that was rolling around so much as Theta. The AI was flitting from one place to another in his brain in confusion, trying to understand what he was seeing, what he was hearing through North. At the same time North found himself staggered by what Theta was feeding him. The way Theta observed that her skin was too perfectly smooth, her eyes a touch too glassy, her hair too immaculate for all that it had been under a helmet for who knew how long.

“What are you?” York gasped out for him, stumbling back at last to sit next to North. His hand immediately reached for Nic’s, and Nic didn’t hesitate to tangle Miles’s trembling fingers with his own.

“Something that never should have existed. But I do, and so I’m trying to clean up the mess the Director made in my name,” Tex said with a weariness in her voice that Nic couldn’t explain.

“I don’t understand,” Miles admitted as Nic squeezed his fingers. “In your name?”

“Maybe not mine exactly, but something close. But I suppose that is behind us. There’s still a lot for me to do, and I’ll find a way to achieve it all in time. For now, though, I swore to help you save Washington. And… to be honest? I think he has some of the answers I’m seeking.”

“Answers?” North asked, staring hard at her strangely lifeless eyes and shushing Theta every time the AI seemed to get antsy again. “To what question?”

There was a flash of something like pain and confusion in Tex’s eyes when her gaze met his, and her voice was just a whisper when she spoke. “Why am I here?”

Theta crooned in wordless sympathy as Tex pushed out of her seat and started back toward the cockpit, her helmet tucked under her arm. Of course the conversation couldn’t just end there. Tex took a moment to pointedly restore her helmet before glancing back over her shoulder at them, her voice level once more.

“Lacey’s run a few rough calculations and we should make the ship where they’re keeping Wash in a few hours. I know we’re all tired after what’s happened, but we might not get a better chance at this. The Director may already have sent a warning ahead of us. I’ll need you both ready for action when we get there, chances are we’ll have to run hot. I’ll be back in an hour for a planning session. See that you’re ready.”

Then she was beyond the hatch and the door was sliding closed behind her, leaving Nic alone with Miles and the anxiety of his AI.

“What was that?” he couldn’t help but ask as he squeezed Miles’s hand once more.

“That,” Miles huffed as he moved further back in the seat and then let himself slide down to rest his head on Nic’s shoulder, “would be Beta. Or so Delta believes”

There was an answering surge from Theta, all the confirmation Nic needed, and yet he still stared down at Miles’s head in shock. “You mean… the AI behind all those classified and encrypted files? We’ve been working with an independent AI fragment this whole time?”

“More like having our asses handed to us by an independent AI fragment,” York groaned, his hand reaching up to brush over the scars around his left eye. “Fuck, Carolina was screwed right from the beginning. Never even knew what she was chasing.”

“None of us could have,” North tried to reassure him, though he wasn’t sure how likely that was, with the conversation turned to Carolina once more.

“All of this, and she died because of not one, but four of the AI fragments,” Miles sighed, and something in his voice made Nic feel his lover had somehow come a step closer to being 'okay.’ “Dammit, D, Theta, not to offend you or anything, but you guys have one messed up family.”