[psl] Church/Tex reunion

[a_shadow]

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.

Comments

[a_shadow]

She huffs and moves off of him, sitting next to him on the bed.

"Yes it fucking is, to you," she says as she makes her way over. She settles in with crossed legs and gazes straight ahead rather than at his face.

"What do you want me to say, Church? I already told you most of what you remember is wrong."

[deathcountspushingthree]

“Well, then, what parts of it are the wrong ones?” Church asks, angry now. “The girlfriend part? The ex one? The part where you killed everyone on Sidewinder? The money-stealing and the sleeping with other guys? What parts?”

‘Cause, Church thinks, it matters which parts are wrong. Matters a lot. Changes the entire narrative of their lives, in fact.

A Tex who killed everyone on Sidewinder is a very different Tex than one didn’t. A Tex who stole his money and slept with other guys would have a very different relationship with him than one who didn’t. And obviously, his current relationship with an ex would be different from his with someone he’s still dating.

And he just doesn’t know how to get past that.

[a_shadow]

"All of it," she says, lowly and deliberately. "All of it. All of it."

She's angry now. It's sort of her fault for not being completely clear with her explanations, for rushing it, for thinking he was okay with it just because he was going with it. Which is what makes her even angrier.

"We were created, Church. First we were together and then we had our memories manipulated and changed and you had most of yours erased and—"

She stops. Reels herself in, because really, the place where all this anger is focusing isn't the right place. It shouldn't be on her, and it shouldn't be on him.

It should be on the Director.

[deathcountspushingthree]

“All of it?”

Though Tex has calmed down by now, what she said just made Church angrier. Especially since he’s not entirely sure how to reconcile “all of it” with the rest of what she said.

“So, was the girlfriend part a lie or not? ‘Cause you’re both saying that all of it is and saying that we were together before? So which is it?”

[a_shadow]

She frowns and closes her eyes briefly.

"Church, most of what you remember about your life is false. You're an AI. You were made in a lab. So was I. We were kept in the lab together. That's what I mean by 'together'. I don't remember enough about that time to say what we did or how it went. They erased that part and made me an agent."

She looks down at his hand and takes it after a slight hesitation.

"The nice thing is we get to decide what that means for us."

Hopefully it's obvious that she is willing to at least be close to him. Even if she's reluctant to give a name to their status.

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church sighs.

“Oh. That kind of together,” he says.

Not the kind of together he would have preferred.

And he’s scared by the fact that they are still in the deciding stage, that they aren’t just together. Sure, she is indicating that she wants to be close to him buuut... he’s scared that he’ll fuck it up and she’ll decide she doesn’t want it anymore.

“Well,” he says. “I think you know what I want it to mean.”

[a_shadow]

"Yeah," she says quietly. She pauses before continuing. "It's just that...well, I don't want to call it anything right now. I have to leave again tomorrow and I just want to enjoy being here with what we have before I have to go."

Please, she thinks. Please let him let her have this.

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church sighs.

“Alright. We don’t have to call it anything. But, please, promise that you’ll at least try to come back.”

‘Cause he really fears that, once she leaves, she’ll be gone forever.

[a_shadow]

Her hand is still holding his, and she swipes her thumb across his knuckles.

"Of course I will, Church," she says. "If I don't come back, you're going to be stranded on an unfamiliar planet with no money and no help."

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church laughs.

“Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about that part,” he says, smiling at her.

Thinking about the practical things. Yet another thing he needs her for.

[a_shadow]

"Okay," she says, nearly in a whisper. He's been so agreeable during this whole situation that she can hardly believe it. She's almost sure something's going to happen to spoil it. She releases his hand, but only to lie down, stretching back out alongside him, and starts to kiss him again. This time it's not nearly as passionate, not nearly as frantic. The kisses are deeper, more contemplative. She raises her hand to brush her fingers along his temple and down his hairline. She still needs to explain about the AIs that were removed from him, how they contain his emotional cores, and how the Meta is capturing them. She herself barely escaped when the Meta absorbed Gamma and Omega. Otherwise she'd be hosting the two of them now, most likely.

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church kisses her back, keeping the kisses slow and deep and contemplative. He feels really good doing this and finds that he’s finally able to - for a moment, anyway - stop thinking about the things that are worrying him. ‘Cause this is a natural pattern that he can easily fall into, something that he doesn’t need to think about it at all to do.

[a_shadow]

Eventually Tex pulls back. She rests her head on the pillow.

"I need to explain things," she says. "Explain them better, so you understand."

As of now, she knows he doesn't, really. Not well enough.

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church sighs.

“Yeah, you do,” he says. “But, for now, I guess this is enough.”

A lot more than he ever expected to have, after the ship blew up and he thought she was dead for months.

[a_shadow]

She smiles faintly. "Well, I need to tell you before I go," she says, taking that as him making an attempt to let her off the hook. She's not going to let him give her that, though a delay is all right. She lowers her hand to swipe it over his chest, where his undersuit is still pulled off his abdomen.

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church smiles at her.

“Good,” he says, leaning into Tex’s touch as he does so.

[a_shadow]

She looks into his eyes, encircling her arm around his torso.

"You're being so forgiving," she mutters, and presses her lips to his again. This is easier than explaining, and it feels better.

[deathcountspushingthree]

Church kisses her, letting himself melt into her touch. Though he would like an explanation, he is perfectly fine with trading one for this, right now.

[a_shadow]

Eventually their kisses fade into sleep, entwined together in an embrace. Tex awakens early in the morning, and she slowly disentangles herself from him to arise from the bed. She needs to prepare to leave.

[deathcountspushingthree]

When Church notices that Tex is disentangled from him, he awakens too.

And he says, “So, you’re leaving now, huh?”

[a_shadow]

"Soon," she says. She glances over at him, starting to strap on her armor plates where they lay next to the chair. "I shouldn't have let that happen. Falling asleep like that."

[deathcountspushingthree]

“Everyone needs to sleep, Tex,” says Church, sighing. “Even us.”

[a_shadow]

"That's not what I mean. I mean sleeping instead of talking."

She's not exactly happy to be forced to tell him all the details now, immediately before leaving, but it would have been easier to tell him while they were snuggled up in bed together. But telling him that way was obviously not going to work.

[deathcountspushingthree]

“Oh,” says Church, sighing. “Right.”

He was eager to hear about all the details before but now, he feels like he would be just fine not knowing.

“There’s all this stuff I need to know.”

[a_shadow]

"There's way too much and I shouldn't have left it to the last minute."

She finishes strapping on her leg armor and puts on the piece that covers the pelvis before scooting the chair over and sitting next to the bed. She can strap the other pieces on later.

"I told you a little bit about this part but I didn't make it clear. They had you, an AI in a lab, and used different scenarios to torture you. They were able to capture different AI fragments every time you split one off—they were emotional cores, essentially. Omega was one of them. He was your rage. They assigned the fragments as AI helpers to agents to help them succeed in the field. Eventually one of them, Sigma, became obsessed with reuniting the fragments and convinced his host to start capturing and killing the hosts so that he could create an AI entity made up of all of them. That's why I needed to get you off the planet as quickly as possible. I don't trust Sigma to get this right."