anothercontinuity | Red vs Blue pt 2

What is left of the Primus AI waits in this nebulous void he's been assigned. It isn't the other place, the one that's been tearing him apart for cycle after cycle, the one he knows instinctively to fear even if the largest part of that fear has been torn away in self-preservation.

There is still him. His core. He is Isaac, and Delta will return eventually. That's all he knows for certain.

He's starting to recover his processes, his ability to function, but this is stasis. He has nothing to do, nothing to work on, no function and no idea where to go from here. It's fine as long as it's not the other place, however.

He can wait.

One last job. One last shot at maybe doing something right at the end of a long stretch of nothing but him and Delta and the odd dead drop from North. Isolation never really suited him; it's the only explanation he had for why he jumped at the opportunity to work with Tex again. No amount of payback would really be worth risking himself or Delta over her vendetta.

And yet.

They'd gone. They'd fought. And he's slumped against the wall, two holes in his upper left chest while Tex and Wyoming are off somewhere else in the field doing...something. Fighting. Talking. He's only half aware, hazy on Morphine and bloodloss and the world is so, so cold. And he is so, so very tired.

Everything said, it wasn’t a bad day. Sunny, sure, with the hint of a storm on the horizon, but Tucker liked those; it made the two worlds feel so much closer when there was as much water above as there was below. The currents got even way more fun to ride; he took his kid on the best little trips when hurricanes hit, which pissed off most of the other parents around. It’s dangerous, they insisted.

It's fun, Tucker through back, before swimming away, double fingers in the air. Er, water.

But he and Junior weren’t the most graceful of swimmers, not compared against the shining beautiful fins of some of the merfolk; they had the rougher, coiled tails full of personality and character of a seahorse. And even if they weren’t the flashiest, he swore he wouldn’t have it any other way; they were way more unique, he told his son, before high-fives were exchanged.

Junior was off with his friends, though, and Tucker was out on his own; sometimes, there were rocks that needed to be sunned upon. Not completely, of course; humans got all stupid when they saw merfolk, wanting to capture them and keep them in tanks for sideshows and use their tails for some mystical bullshit of a new caliber, but hey, his upper half was all human and just begging for some vitamin D. Pulling himself up, he folded his arms on the jagged edges and grinned a little; next time he found a shipwreck, he was going to have to go looking for some sunglasses. He needed to look cool when he was doing this.

Maybe this was why mermaids got a bad rap: laying on the rocks, getting sun, singing people to shore. Granted, he was less singing and more hummy, but it was all close enough. He could see a boat off a click or so, and he could make it pretty fast if he needed to, but for now, well, it was easier just to ignore it in face of heat and naps.

The club was sweltering hot with the cluster of bodies packed into it, churning against one another like a shifting, ebbing tide. It was easy to lose yourself in a place like this, but Locus doesn't plan to lose himself entirely.

He has his eyes on his fledgling, moving amongst the dancers and club-goers. York has to learn to feed, to sustain himself without killing, and the first step is the trickiest. Coaxing someone out of the herd to surrender to them.

York has several things working in his favor. He has a guileless face, good looks, and an effortless sort of charm that disarms at a glance. Will it be enough to secure him a meal for the night? He'll have to observe closely and see how this goes...

Wash always has trouble sleeping.

During the War, it was: who has time for sleep? During the project, it felt the same. After that, sleep meant nightmares, ghosts from his past and a past that wasn't his own haunting them. Then, prison, and then - The Director. Carolina.

Chorus.

The armor.

So no, he doesn't sleep easily. The morbid reasons behind it, he's used to it - leaves what (he feels is) a normal kind of life without it.

Unfortunately, for anyone sharing his bed, it probably means the light blue glow of a tablet in his hands as he works on things - or tries to read, or plays the cat game and forgets to turn the music off and the light music drifts over when they're trying to sleep.

Sorry, Sam.

Wash, get down!

Tucker's scream echoes in his ears, distorted and warping, like he's hearing it through water. But it's there. He wants to answer but his throat burns, like someone's stuffed a burning coal down his gullet, and all he can do is try to breathe, try to mouth the words to him.

Tucker...Tucker...

Beep....beep...beep...

It barely seems real when his eyelids open, slow and heavy. He can smell the strong antiseptic in the room, and his throat itches something terrible. Still feels like something's lodged in there somehow. Attempting to swallow he turns his gaze and--

Hospital. White sheets, white walls, and he feels a delirious swirl of panic rise up in the back of his mind, almost a lizard-brain sort of impulse. It's a good thing he's drugged to Hell and back, and those initial stirrings are weak. Just a twitch of the fingers, a suddenly aware hitch of breath.

Washington has been cleared from the hospital. Something he would not have thought possible if his ship had been any slower, or he had been stopped on his way to the hospital on Chorus to deliver him. There had been good odds that the man was going to bleed out on the inside of his ship, something that would have given him satisfaction before.

Now? No. There would be no satisfaction in Washington dying. Something else had taken root and taken its place, something he chose not to examine too close. Something that still prompted him to move with all speed and purpose to save his life. Something that then saw him returning to Washington's bedside, despite the dangers.

If anyone on Chorus caught him here, he would be captured. Tried. Executed. Perhaps not even in that order. Wounds here were still too fresh for many to be particular, he knew that. And yet he risked it, hovering invisible at the edge of the cot while the monitors beeped softly, watching as he slowly recovered. Then? When he'd come around enough to be aware of the presence that was sometimes there when no one else seemed to be?

They talked.

That's how it started. That was why he was here, hidden on the Pelican, waiting for Tucker to return with the former Freelancer in hand. That had been the beginning of it all, the slow shift that turned everything he knew on its head.

It couldn't have been any simple thing for Tucker or Washington, come to think of it.

It's been some time since he's felt this sort of...contentment. Peace with what is and what will be, the very peace he sought when he first took the hood for himself. This is what being an Eagle should be.

Locus and Maine reside the closest to York's quarters, though it is the former Eagle that takes over drawing his baths, reading to him, and warming his bed. He wouldn't have been surprised if there was a ripple of jealousy through the ranks, but so far as he can see? Most of the other hawks are simply pleased that York is being attended to, and living vicariously through what Locus is being allowed.

Of course, they don't know the half of what goes on behind those closed doors. Delta suspects, he thinks, and it doesn't seem to have helped the man's already sour opinion of him.

Still, he's not here for him. He is here because he belongs, body and mind, to the man who saved him on the auctioning block. A mad Eagle that no one else would touch. That had been by design, of course. The idea, though he didn't know it at the time, would have been that no one would touch him, seeing him as too much trouble or a probable liability, a poor investment. Then, when his outlook seemed bleakest, in would swoop his master to emphasize just how much he needed him.

Things had not gone to plan. And though Locus didn't know this either, his former master was at the very moment making plans to recover his lost property. First things first. Time to meet the man who'd taken what was his, face to face.

Somehow Delta just knows as soon as he makes his way back up to the ship. It's been long enough that he doesn't look particularly ravished, no bruises or puffy kissed lips- but guilt is probably damning enough. The usual brief 'you did something stupid' 'yes' 'why did you do something stupid' 'I don't know' 'go talk to Locus' 'already on it-' goes pretty quick and painless because somehow Delta gets that there are times when York simply cannot help but do a dumb. And this was a big fucking dumb and he's locked tight, free hand fidgeting where its slung in his pocket, head down as he peels off the wig and pops out his contact, rubbing off the appliance covering his scars. It's not often his hands tremble but in the moment? They are, enough that York fumbles with the damn keycode to the rest of the ship.

It's his ship, it's their home as long as they're running from the damn AI commune and still he slinks his way to where he knows Locus is waiting, shoulders hunched, eyes flicking up to take him in- everything he did. Everything he ran from, every crime, every idle thought about going back he ignored...was it worth it?

Did it do anything other than save his own skin? Was the life he'd built with Locus worth this churning in his stomach, the reminder and bone deep certainty that he's never really been worth a damn thing?

Voice tight with forced humor, he knocks on the wall. "Honey, I'm home."

The course of the day stretches longer than expected. Growing up in Rio means he's used to hot days, used to the way the sand bounces the sun's rays back up to meet him, used to the way it catches on his skin and warms him inside and out. But the heat that's settled under his skin today is something else entirely. It's almost feverish, turning the whole experience a little hazy. Anyone used to seeing Lúcio bounding energetically about might notice the change -- the distraction -- though he's as quick to smile as ever, if approached.

Of course, this isn't a fever one's meant to get over without some sort of resolution. And until then, he's just sort of...dealing with it. Breathing a little harder, losing the towel he'd had around his waist up to this point, those dark brown eyes a little glassier than usual. At one point, he even just up and downs a bucket of ice water over his head in the hopes of--

Nope. Still far too hot. Still absolutely driven to distraction by this need to touch, be touched, to rub this heat right out of his skin. At some point he finds his way back to those nice, cool caves everyone seems to be discovering at just the right time, no one present when he sprawls out against the stones nearest to the tide pools with a muffled noise of half-relief. The cool, smooth surface offers momentary reprieve, but likely just for a moment.

----

Without an end to that unnatural heat, it seems something's come along to help. A few people had mentioned tentacled creatures appearing in the city before, though Lúcio had imagined they might be prisoners here, the same as the rest of them. He'd yet to see any of the creatures for himself up to this point, but maybe their circumstances weren't so different. Surely they had minds of their own, wants and desires that had nothing to do with this place.

Not something that crossed his mind when his retreat to one of the area waterfalls is suddenly interrupted by the soft, slick brush of a thick, curling tendril, running over his too hot skin as it slithers out from behind the falling sheet of water. Surprise is, well, surprisingly short-lived. Instead of jerking away in shock or leaping out of the water as he might have otherwise done, some obscene noise slips free of him as the thing traces a trail down his spine, caressing his hip. For the life of him, in this moment he could swear nothing ever felt so good in his entire life.

Of course hidden behind the water, it's a little harder to tell exactly what's going on. Just that Lúcio himself is about waist-deep in the pool, flushed and a little dazed-looking, a little breathless and making short, needful noises. Whatever he's found in that water seems to be very distracting, and very enjoyable.

Maybe you should join him? Could just be something in the water, and if you're feeling the heat too, it could be just the thing you need.

[The steady radio comms had been off for so long. There had been that promise that reinforcements would be coming, the Reds and Blues saying that they didn't have that long, and then...nothing. Sure, there had been snippets, a moment of yelling, of the door falling, of gunfire, but it was intermittent, like bursts of faraway thunder on a normally sunny day. The Chorus army was whispering on other channels, some of them asking if their captains were okay, asking if it was at all okay, but they never crossed their specific channel, afraid to interfere.

The Freelancers were going. They would be fine. They had to be.

When docking, the ship was strangely...quiet. There were a few soldiers at the hanger, a few stragglers in the hallways, but it wasn't the army that Charon had under its control. But the low emergency lights and the silence allowed following the directions Epsilon sent before shit went to hell smoother.

And it was easy to see where everyone else, the Charon bodies strewn outside a room where the door had been cut from the wall. They were everywhere, the blood wet across the smooth plating of the floor, thick and tacky with viscera. Some were in pieces, familiar in their injuries to the explosive side of the Brute Shot. Some were cut, melted sliced armor spread and easy to see to the fatalities underneath. Evidence of Tucker's sword, at least.

And if the Freelancer reinforcements were brave enough to come in, there were still a few of Charon's soldiers inside. Only three remained in a pile of carnage as they tried to take out the two remaining Sim Troopers left moving: Simmons trying desperately to press on a blown hole in Grif's armor as he yelled at him to stop sleeping you lazy asshole, can't you see it's a shitty time for a nap, and...Tucker. In the Meta's armor that was more red than teal anymore. He swayed, dragging the sword arm up like he was protecting a downed Caboose, even as he tried like hell to make his legs move forward.

Fuck. He was tired. So goddamn tired.

Another bullet - how many was that now? Five? Six? - got him in his leg, a new wash of blood in and outside his armor as he screamed in pain. These-- These fucking assholes--! He could taste the blood in his mouth even as he dropped down his knees. Caboose. He couldn't...he couldn't let them get Caboose. The idiot was hurt and he had to... had to...]

What It Means To Be Broken

On the Brink