hexaflexagons | [psl] Church/Tex reunion

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[psl] Church/Tex reunion

There are several choices for Tex after she crash-landed at Valhalla. She knows that Maine is pursuing her, and she knows her presence in combination with Omega and Gamma being there as well will draw him there. No one can account for the choices we make. In most cases she would have chosen to stay there, face him, and fight, yet there's one thought that keeps running through her mind, and that's Church's complete vulnerability.

She has no idea about the fact that the time distortion unit caused it to take a year for the ship to crash. She just absconds as soon as the ship is down. She makes her way back to Blood Gulch. She tells herself it's just exploratory, just to check on him, make sure things are okay, but she finds that he's gone. How can he be gone? She roots through the computer systems there, figures out it's been much longer than could ever make sense, and finds Church's relocation orders.

And so she's gone again, traveling with her invisibility on to avoid drawing Maine's attention. She reaches the base Church had been assigned to only to find that it's crumbling, the wall damaged. At least that makes infiltrating easy. She doesn't trust that he won't have some kind of protection—Flowers is dead, but surely the Director intends to keep him under guard. So she enters the base and stalks around, intending to kill anyone she finds inside besides Church, but there's no one. No one at all.

This is weird. He must be under surveillance, she thinks. She needs to meet up with him, but she needs for it to be without the Director knowing, so she exits the base and sets a charge off in the rocks outside. The plan is for him to notice the explosion and to go investigate. She positions herself behind the barrier there and materializes, waiting.

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“Did you know they’d be here when you came?” Church asks. “And if you did, is it ‘cause they’re following you or ‘cause they’ve been watching me?”

He’s sure that if they were watching him he would’ve noticed but who knows?

Maybe there’s an equivalent of Tex’s cloaking for Pelicans or something. He’s no expert.

“And who are they, anyway? Freelancers?”

He’s scared but he doesn’t want to show it. So he asks Tex questions instead, hoping his fear isn’t evident in his tone.

"Shut up, Church," she says, wishing she had a grenade launcher and not just a rifle. " I told you I'd tell you, but right now I'm busy."

She fires and manages to cause one of the engines to flame up a bit—just a burst of flames that then disappears—and she decides they need to take the chance.

"The caves," she shouts at him, holstering her rifle on her back and taking his hand to run once again.

And Church gets running in the direction of the caves, holding her hand all the while.

“Fine,” he says, his tone making it clear that he’s still annoyed with her.

Willing to wait if that’s really necessary but annoyed nonetheless. He wants to know, dammit. Sure, he trusts her - mostly - but sometimes, it just doesn’t feel like enough.

"'Fine'," she imitates once they're safe inside, releasing his hand. "Like I didn't just save your life."

Not in the way he thinks. He's not in danger of being assassinated, but of being changed, mind-controlled, maybe even tortured again. She doesn't have any idea what the Project would do with him now that she's returned for him, but she doesn't imagine it would be pretty.

She gestures with her head deeper into the system. "They saw where we went in. We need to keep moving."

“Well, yeah, you saved me from getting killed by them,” Church says. “But I didn’t even know they wanted to until you came here.”

And if Tex was literally anyone else, Church would’ve suspected her of bringing them here on purpose. But since she’s Tex and he - despite his protests - loves and trusts her, the thought doesn’t even bother to cross his mind.

He continues into the cave, though, as he says it. But he paces himself to make sure he doesn’t get out of Tex’s earshot, even if it makes him go slower than he should.

“So it’s hard to be grateful to you for it, considering that.”

Tex doesn't stop and turn like she wants to—they really do have to keep moving—but she sends him a withering look and a scoff.

"You'll understand later," she says. "They were watching and they knew the only reason I'd seek you out would be to explain."

So yes, they're only seeking to catch him because she's here.

“To explain?” Church says, both annoyance and amusement in his voice. “Really? ‘Cause explaining is the one thing that’s the opposite of what you’ve been doing.”

If she considers this to be explaining, he’d like to know what she considers “not explaining” to be.

"Goddammit, Church," she says. "I didn't want to have to do it on the run."

How can she even broach this with him, who he really is, what they did to him? Who she is to him, and why she's trying so hard to rescue him?

“So, when and where do you wanna do it, then?” Church asks. “And do you think we’ll ever not be on the run?”

He is really getting the impression that she didn’t plan this out that well. Or, at least, not to his satisfaction, anyway.

“‘Cause if they can chase us anywhere, we might never stop running. And if we never stop to breathe and that means you’ll never explain this shit to me, I’ll never know what the hell I’m running for. And that’s just fucked.”

Sure, he’ll follow her anywhere but can he at least know where she wants them to go and why she wants them to go there?

He's right. She can no longer hear the Pelican, because they're deeper into the cave system, but that doesn't mean there aren't agents entering the caves to chase them down. So that means they really can't stop moving.

"Okay. Church, it's...going to be hard for you to accept," she says. "Just remember when I'm telling you about it that I don't lie to you. I let you assume things sometimes but I never lie to you."

Church takes a deep breath. Or, well, the robot equivalent of a deep breath.

He doesn’t really need to breathe but it’s reassuring for him to do this anyway. ‘Cause he remembers being alive and what taking a deep breath did for him then. And he needs that now, needs it to steady him before whatever he’s going to hear.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll remember that.”

He keeps his gaze focused on her, using her presence to ground him for the revelation that’s coming. And he tells himself that, since she’s here, everything will be alright. That he has nothing to fear with her here.

That everything he fears is probably way too scared of her to dare to encroach upon them.

Tex can't look back at him, since she's guiding their way through the caves, but she can feel his gaze on her. She really hopes this won't go over too badly.

"The reason you can go into ghost form isn't because you're a ghost," she says, deciding to offer up the most important information first. "You're an AI. That's why you can possess electronics, like the robot you're in."

“I’m a... what?” Church squeaks out, utterly confused.

He knows what AI are but he doesn’t see how he could possibly be one. But Tex says he is one so he supposes he has to believe her, even though it sounds incredibly improbable to him.

“How does that even work?”

"They copy a person's brain and make an AI out of it," she says. "That's the only way they know how to make a complex AI. They call them smart AIs. And you're one of them. So am I."

She hates the way this is going. If only they could stop and have a proper talk.

“So, we’re both... copies... of other people’s brains? Who’s brains?” Church asks. “And why haven’t you told me this sooner?”

Like when she first found out that he was... dead? Or, well, whatever the hell you call an AI forced out of their human host body by their death?

Not a ghost, apparently.

She can't help it—he needs to look her in the face for this. Or they need to face visor-to-visor, anyway. She stops, turns, and holds out her hand, waiting for him to approach.

"Listen, Church. It's going to be confusing until I get all the details out. Actually, even then you might still be confused. I can't think of how to tell you in a way that won't do that."

She continues to watch for proximity alert beacons on her HUD. So far she hasn't seen any sign that anyone has entered the cave, but that might mean they're far behind.

Church approaches, holds her hand, and looks her in the visor.

“This will be confusing for a while,” he says. “Got it.”

He’s not really satisfied with that but he supposes it’s a little bit better than when Tex was telling him absolutely nothing at all. And so, he decides to accept it and hope that, one day, he’ll know it all and it’ll all make sense to him.

"The head of the project I'm in created you," she says. "You were the original AI made for their experiments. That's where all the AIs they use came from. They..."

She pauses. How does she tell him he's lost his memory? How does she tell him that he's been tortured?

"They figured out that if they put you under great strain, you'd break into pieces. And that's where...where I came from."

She came before the torture, but the details were confusing, just as she'd said.

“Great strain?” Church says. “You mean, like, they put me under a lot of fucking stress and it... broke me?”

He doesn’t like the sound of that. Especially since he knows that he’s been really stressed out in Blood Gulch - why else would he yell and bitch so much, after all? - and that didn’t do anything weird to his mind. So either he’s weaker than he seems and there was no further he could break by then, or... Freelancer did something worse than just stress him out.

“And that made you? You’re just... a product of my own negative feelings?”

Not even his positive ones.

His negative ones.

And yet, he wants her. And he loves her.

Even though, if she’s right, she’s made out of all of the things he really shouldn’t want and that it is weird that he does want. Of all the feelings that suck to feel.

"No, I came first. Before they started doing that shit."

She gazes at him. The truth of her origins was so bittersweet to acknowledge.

"You loved me. That's why you were able to make me. Because you thought so much of me."

She notices a faint beacon on the edges of her proximity map. She huffs.

"We have to get moving again."

Church smiles at her.

“Well, that’s good. If you were just my stress, I dunno what I’d do.”

‘Cause he knows that, even if she was, she would still be too important for him to just let go of. He’s gonna be on the Tex ride as he long as he can, whether it’s a good idea or not. Even if it gets him hurt or killed or... broken again.

And then he sighs.

“Okay, fine, let’s go.”

And he starts moving again.

She starts following, then passes him to ensure that she's the one in the lead.

"You're taking this better than I expected," she remarks.

“Well, internally, I’m freaking out,” Church says. “But you told me not to do that soooo... though I can’t make my mind behave, I can make the rest of me stay in line.”

It’s not something he excels at but with Tex here to steady him and the threat of her disapproval to worry about, he’s finding it surprisingly easy. ‘Cause she’s a solid presence and he cares about her opinion - far more than he normally allows himself to admit.

And he likes obeying her orders, even though he makes a big fuss about it and questions her at every turn. ‘Cause it’s comforting to let his mind fall away and let her take the reigns for a bit. ‘Cause he knows she can handle it, that she’s got it under control.

He follows her through the caves, glad to let her stay in the lead.

"I'm glad you're not taking it out on me," she says. That was what she'd most been worried about when she launched into telling him what had happened.

Soon enough she finds another entrance to the cave, and thankfully they've been traversing the underground in the right direction. They're merely 12 klicks from the city now, and they have the ability to make a straight shot of it.

"Here," she says. "We need to stay in under the trees as much as we can." And as this is a different environment than the one where his base had been—it's a forested area—that should prove simple.

“Well,” Church says, pursing his lips. “It’s not really your fault, is it? So I don’t see why I’d take it out on you.”

And he loves her more than he’s willing to admit, and he needs her there to comfort him - in her own Texy way - right now.

“Alright,” he says, his voice a whisper, once they arrive in the forested area. “I can do that.”

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