"Mm, I'm not surprised. Don't think I didn't register that you liked when I broke all that granite."
Macaque starts purring a bit, just to give Wash an example. (Also, it might be another thing that helps him relax.) It doesn't sound quite like a lion's purring, but definitely more wild and deeper than a housecat's.
"What, my fishing you out of that swimming pool when we first met didn't impress you sufficiently? I'd better step up my game." Since we're teasing here.
"You really have a perfect read on MK, not that I'm surprised. But I don't think he'd leave me behind, I just think he'd keep me around and resent me the whole time. And as for what I did..."
He hesitates.
"In the simulation, someone showed up. A power broker of a sort from Cole's world, someone who pulls strings about the happenings there. Cole can't remember most of what happened in the last little while because of more fey bullshit, so he asked this guy, who's a fey himself, to fill in some blanks. Started talking about how Cole died again, and a bunch of stuff that freaked me out. So the guy offered me a deal. He is limited as far as the influence he can have over their world's inhabitants because of rules he'd bound by, but I'm not bound by those rules. It's a deal that would let me go to their world to help Cole, try and keep him alive."
"I know fey deals are sketchy as hell, but what he wanted from me had loopholes so big you could drive a train through them. I can't see every angle since it's not my world, but it was the only thing I could do for Cole. He had me over a barrel and we both knew it. So I agreed. Cole pretty much lost it. I didn't know it then, but he has a history of not being able to stop bad things from happening to people he loves. I don't know if knowing that would have changed my mind, but it's done now. All I can do is make the best of it."
"Yeah. I mean, I've been attracted to tough people, but Epsilon definitely liked his partners who could put him through a wall," he said with an amused chuckle. Just gonna call out Church.
"To be fair, Feather is the one who saw most of that," he said. "Though she does think you're cool, so there is that."
"MK isn't hard to read, once you get past the playing dumb thing to lighten the mood. That sort of thing has been barely white noise for me for a while, so the rest is pretty clear," he said. "I don't think he'd even go for resentment. Probably just be heartbroken."
There is a long pause at that because oh boy. Oh boy. "Honestly, I really can't blame Cole for freaking out. Even without the trauma, that would be a nightmare to watch go down."
"You in the habit of making terrible deals when feeling cornered about helping yoru people?"
Epsilon's partners? Can AIs... well, apparently so. "Admittedly, just because I can do that doesn't mean it's what usually happens. I'm a sucker for encouragement is all that is." MK wants to be bound, he binds. Red wants him to bite, he bites. And Wukong can choose from a vast menu that's only limited by his imagination.
"--Ah, right." It had been unnerving as hell at the time, but now it's just a thing that happens, it's whatever. It's part of Wash and part of Choco, he's okay with it. Even MK has a whole other persona.
Macaque groans softly and scrubs at his face. "You get that heartbroken isn't better, right?"
Anyway, the meat of this is the deal he made. Macaque chuckles humorlessly. "I do have that habit, yes. Usually less deals and more just... choices. Even when I know it's not the best idea. The last time I did that, I was killed. The time before that, we launched a rebellion against Heaven. I'm better about it now than I used to be, but not by much, evidently. You don't want to know what sort of bullshit I'd sign up for if it had been Choco or Donnie instead of Cole."
Its what happens when AIs are copied from people. Also robot bodies. Or mental simulations. Its a whole thing. "Is that what you call biting your ear? Encouragement?" He asked. "Though its not surprising. I can see you having a praise kink."
"It can be hard to track, I know. I don't usually share memories with Feather, it takes a while to untangle and communicate that effectively. Same with Ai-chan and Epsilon," he said. "If its a variation of 'me,' then I remember."
He hummed. "Resentment is combative. You can work with heartbroken, if you're brave enough."
He sighed. "Choco would have been in despair, and Donnie would have been incredibly mad. Donnie likes to find those tough solutions, its admirable. And Choco hates the whole kidnap thing and its reeking of that same lack of agency." He considers his hand a few moments, running his fingers over Macaque's.
"I don't know if you can get out of a fey deal once its made, but just so you don't make any other highly questionable deals, Choco and I can offer another solution when it comes to getting to other worlds," he said. "In Kyriakos, Epsilon had a teammate. Roxy Lalonde. In short, she's a creation void god. She steals nothingness from things to make them exist, objects, concepts, information, and she's intimately familiar with the space between universes. She's been helping Choco and I for a few years now when it comes to solving issues like being in the wrong universe."
"Biting my ear hurt, and I reacted accordingly. Breaking the granite was more typical for what I do when encouraged. It was what you were saying and sounding like."
He watches Wash with his hand, not moving his own very much, just letting Wash do as he likes with it. "I'd rather avoid the whole thing altogether and make Cole better, if it's all the same to you. I've caused enough heartbreak in MK. In my defense, though, some of those were less a result of terrible choices I made and either terrible circumstances courtesy of the Lady Bone Demon eating me from the inside, or just differences in how we do things that took a while to work through." The brain surgery thing, that could definitely be called a result of terrible choices.
It's sobering to think of Choco or Donnie being upset that he tried to save their life. Isn't it just as much a lack of agency to stand there and be forced to do nothing while someone you love is in grave danger?
"I'm not sure if I can get out of the deal," he says quietly. He's not sure he wants to. "If it helps, the guy promised to use every power he has available to make sure I got out of there safely. He took a liking to me, so that probably also factors in. When I first walked in there all he wanted to do was kiss me, and I said I'd do it since he's the one who restored Cole to life, and it was just a kiss." No big deal.
He considers this information about their friend. "Maybe. It would be good to get in there and at least learn more about what I'm dealing with. Max would probably let me out of the deal if I play my cards right, explain that I was just done having my feelings entirely rearranged when I did that. Which is perfectly true, they still kick up weirdly now and then. He said that he wanted to hear me sing, he seemed lonely. It wouldn't hurt to ask if he'd modify the deal."
"I don't want to hurt Cole, I just like my chances of survival better than his. Especially with Max's protection."
"Ah, so that's the difference. Noted. And I will remember to avoid that much pressure in the future if we sleep together again," he said. If they do is a little up in the air. Saying yes to the date and saying yes to sleeping together are different things. He's not necessarily opposed, but needing to see where the chips fall.
"Cole getting better is definitely the better outcome. Might see if he can think of alternatives, or find ways to make more anchors. Just for safety. Redundancies and all that," he said, thumbs tracing over his knuckles. "I think that's just proof you can work things out with MK, even with really huge fucks up, given time."
There is a difference between doing nothing and taking control of the situation whole cloth. Wash himself had more than once taken Choco's agency from her with his protectiveness. But he could never not try and she knew that, so it was all about balance.
"If he used the word 'promise,' it does help. Depending on what kind of fey he is, it can be really hard to say how things will play out, even with liking you. A fairy liking someone could be a benevolent as helping them to malicious as wanting to keep them in a jar for eternity."
"She's also got a 'hella stealth mode' as she puts it. You could get a lot of information, know the full of the things going on instead of going in blind," he said. "Hopefully Max is that readable, but never hurts to have a back up plan."
"My ears don't see the light of day very often." They're glamoured over now, for example. "I've been covering them over for centuries, so that makes them even more sensitive to touch than normal."
Macaque is fine seeing where the chips fall. Hitting a reset button sounds just about perfect, actually. He doesn't want one moment of coping and negativity to guide anything they do from here on.
"He can't control how the pillars work, but if I were to vanish from here, for example, he'd have to get a new one somehow... this is the first time it's ever been a person, so I'm not sure he knows all he rules about it. I just want to deal with this, and then once he's better I can get into the weeds about it."
Macaque's fingers lift and lower in response to Wash thumbing over them, just idly moving his hand in response to touch stimuli.
"He did. Use that word, I mean." Cole insisted on it. "And me leaving their world to return to my own, or wherever I'd like to go, is part of the deal. Between the two, it's safe to say that I'll be leaving there alive. He can screw with a lot, but the language there was unambiguous. Cole wrote that part of the deal himself."
"I'll certainly take help with knowing what's going on. Specifically about what he wants me to do in exchange for the help I'd be providing to Cole. Like I said, there are loopholes there."
"Ah. I know that feelings. Spend a decade in power armor and then you start touching people, and its all...buzzy," he said. "Even with the past few years moving in and out of armor, still takes getting used to." There is a pause. "Your ears are cute though. Good for extra scritches too, I bet."
"Sounds frustrating," he said. Frankly, it sounded like a nightmare. He ends up looking at the back of his hand for a few moments, where there is a rather fancy if oddly faded tattoo there.
Even Servants get to choose to a degree.
"But yeah. Making sure he's stable makes sense. Just don't forget you do have people to rely on to help. Donnie can figure out a lot of scans and clearly Red Son knows a bunch of magic stuff."
"Good. Don't get kidnapped by fairies. It sounds as annoying as desperate gods," he said. "After this place, I'll get you into contact with Roxy. You can figure things out. Fair warning, she....well, you don't look at her and think 'god.' She's got strong wild sorority girl vibes."
"Thanks." There's a short pause, but what the hell. Maybe he saw it in the heart. "Did you see a memory of when I was very young in my heart game? My ears caused the monkeys to reject me, and humans too once I started going around them. I only let them out when I trust someone." So there's that.
"Yeah, it's frustrating. But mostly I'm just in a panic all the time." A small self-deprecating huff. "Cole said something to me the other day, that I do whatever I have to do if I think I need to for my people. He was talking about this deal, among other things. I know it wasn't all a compliment, but I don't know if I feel like it's true. If it was true, he wouldn't be in this mess."
--Kidnapped by desperate gods? He must mean this place, or the other words that stole him and Choco. "I mean, it's definitely not the plan. But she sounds like fun. Or at least, never boring."
"Unfortunately people are assholes," he said, tilting his head. "I didn't see it, I just believe it. Animals get wary on what looks different too." He is noting that sign of trust though.
"He's right," Wash said, blunt and matter of fact. "Just because you're doing whatever you think you have to do doesn't mean you're doing the right thing. Its amazing how often being that desperate for your loved ones actually tends to lead people into a trashfire of a situation. I'm sure Tucker can give you an account of how many times he's had to tell me off for that practice."
He threads their fingers together. "You let me use you, even thought you believed it could ruin things at the same time. You wanted to help. It was the only way to feel like you could. Its a messy thing. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you get your teammates shaking you to stop doing it."
Fey, fairies, basically the same thing. "She is a delight. A little hard to follow with the old internet speak, but she is quite charming. A very sweet girl."
"I know." He's intimately familiar with what assholes people and animals and gods and demons can all be. It's a little cute that Wash tried to school him on what makes animals nervous, though.
Macaque says nothing for a moment as Wash laces their fingers. "Speaking from experience huh? I'm listening, for what it's worth." He is. He can't promise that he'll be less desperate to take action in the future, but he is hearing and remembering.
"Things get messy when feelings are involved. Always have. It's one thing that isn't any easier with old age."
"A lot of experience. After the snow was a lot of me trying to find where I was useful, and then when I felt more part of the team, trying to make sure they were all ready for anything, and then there's the self sacrificing streak that I know pisses Tucker right off. It likely concerns the Reds, but they're kind of emotionally constipated so they don't show their worry a lot," he said. "Caboose is...an enigma at all times. Sometimes I was doing the right thing. Other times, I had to get told off. And yet more times, I had to get rescued from my own throwing myself on the sword tendencies."
"Well now, just shoot all my hopes down, why don't you?" He said and he huffed.
"At least I know that if you're judging me, it's not without getting it." Which means a lot, actually. Having someone get it, even if they disagree and are telling you to knock it off, is really quite valuable.
He laughs a bit at the disappointment. "Sorry. I've got to dispense some wisdom of my own now and then."
And then a name, and although Macaque can suspect what he's being told, he's not certain enough to not ask. He squeezes Wash's hand back.
To be fair, Tucker also likes to sometimes hop into the self sacrificing, do whatever you gotta train that Wash is always on. So sometimes it really does take knowing one. "It is. Its just easier to admit on the outside, instead of when I'm actively doing it."
"Names are important. They have ways of grounding," he said, thumb running over the side of Macaque's hand. "Some are stronger than others. Best way to get the most honest reaction out of me is David. If I'm still a royal asshole with that name, then things are dire. Usually it'll shake me and something will come out. It may not be a good reaction, whatever it is, but it'll be honest."
"David's my real name. And it does have to be David. You might have heard Nyssa try to use Davi-nii on me in the Heart and it didn't work. Choco was protecting it, I'm sure, keeping her from getting the full of it. Because Choco knows how much work I put into protecting everything connected to that name." All the parts that wouldn't have survived the combination of Epsilon and Article 12, not unless he buried them so deep that it became impossible for him to access that part for literal years.
"Yes, well. Everything's always easier with distance. I'm sure that if I had been able to look at myself from the outside, I'd have shaken my own teeth loose." That's not how perspective works, sadly. At least not until someone listens and explains it in a way that clicks.
Macaque waits through the explanation, and is... touched. And a hint guilty, because Wash shouldn't have to rip himself open to stop Macaque from getting himself into bad situations. But mostly, it strikes him as a similar show of trust to letting his six ears show.
"Okay." He's being given permission to use that name in emergencies, and he'll do so sparingly. At the very least, considering using something so loaded as a way to jar Wash out of a mood might clue Macaque in that he needs to be careful. "Thank you."
"I wish I had a name of my own to give you, but I never got one of my own." He was called the Six-Eared Macaque because that's what described him, and to almost everyone around him, that's all he ever was.
"I feel that," Wash said. He would be hella judgemental of himself. For many reasons, honestly.
He nods and actually lifts up his hand, to kiss his knuckles. "You're giving a lot to help me," he said. So he wants to recognize that trust. And his name was a show of trust. It throws off a lot of his mental balancing acts, and its takes being in an incredibly safe place to hear it without some kind of mental kick.
"Its never too late to choose your own name," he said. "Or I could call you Sixer. Most people I know back home used some kind of nicknames or last names." Really, he was probably getting away with Wash as long as he has by virtue of the number of nicknames people use.
That kiss is such a little thing, but it feels much bigger in Macaque's head. "You went into my heart to help me, to say nothing of giving me your whole story just to help with the nightmares. And this whole setup, which took a lot of paying attention to what I like . I think I still have a ways to go before we're even."
That doesn't mean he's going to fight too hard about it. He just knows what Wash deserves from his perspective and it's a hell of a lot. "But... I'm glad you see me that way. Stupid choices and all."
"Referencing six might get people asking questions I don't want to answer if it's overheard. But... some people call me Mac for short." Which he never actually gave them permission to do, they just decided to and he was fine with it. This is the first time he's offering it.
Its hard to say how big it actually is, but its not nothing either. Its important to see what affection gets a reaction. It helps in figuring out where he stands when it comes to these feelings.
"Ah, but when people ask those questions, that's when you start making up bullshit. Its amazing how long you can avoid actually explaining the reasoning behind a nickname," he said with some amusement. "But Mac is good too."
He is still looking at his hand, tracing those slow circles. "The heart did also have guilt and having experience with how they function," he said. "Even if I hate them, having people just be reckless in a heart is worse. As for telling you...that I had to. One thing amnesia made clear is having a support system is vital for how bad it goes. Epsilon may have broken the class, but it was Article 12 that made all the pieces fall."
He shrugged. "As for the paying attention thing, I'm just good at details and also you and I have similar taste in food."
Macaque chuckles, though it comes out almost flat. "I'm great at bullshitting -- well for anyone who isn't you at any rate -- you don't have to tell me that. I just know that don't want to do it about that." There's a reason he started going by just Macaque, except for when he introduced himself to MK, which was more about hoping MK would clock him from Journey to the West and be all the more eager to train with him. Little did he know how shit MK was with any parts of that story other than 'Monkey King Does Something Awesome'.
Besides, turning the defining trauma of his life into a cute nickname and then getting potential stranger questions and then horseshit stories following from that, or at minimum having to think about the possibility, would be a lot for anyone. If he was that healthy a lot of things would be different.
"It doesn't really matter why you did all that stuff. You still did, and one of the reasons was to help me." He doesn't want to say it was the reason, since probably supporting Choco and Donnie was in there too, but it's good enough that wanting to help Macaque was a factor. "I'll have to pay closer attention to you so I can make some effort to keep up with repaying it all."
He pauses, thinking for a second, then decides it's not worth trying to bypass the obvious. Whether he says something or doesn't, Wash will know.
"Choco didn't tell me about Article 12. I'm not asking you to get into that if you don't want to, but just so you know I'm not familiar enough to follow."
"I mean, part of the fun is people know the stories aren't real, but one of them MIGHT be real and trying to figure it out," he said and shrugged. "But fair enough."
"It was one of the reasons, yeah," Wash said. It was also helping someone important to Choco and Donnie, but for all Wash can be an utter bastard...he does like helping people. He cares about people and wants to make the world better. It was why he joined the army in the first place. To help keep people safe, because he was good at what he did, and the army needed people.
He just gets a lot more tired about saving people these days after all the bullshit, but that part of him isn't gone. It just needs more breaks.
"To be fair, I'm not hard to figure out. These days. Choco, the guys, and Carolina have done a fuckton to get me to not ride so hard on my bullshit. At least out of high stress situations," he said. Its honestly really weird NOT having something potentially trying to kill him every other day and he has to remind himself to not become a paranoid asshole about it.
...honestly, Donnie's security system is helping him fight that impulse A LOT.
He hummed. "It was hard to say if she did. It might even take her a bit to put the pieces together, though I'm sure she will at some point," he said. "Article 12 is Leave of Absence from the military. It can be for various reasons, but mine was 'unfit for duty due to mental instability.' Until I could pass a psyche eval, I couldn't rejoin the army. Now, keep in mind, at this point? The army was desperate for bodies. We were in a war that threatened the extinction of the entire human race and we were still losing at that point. To be declared mentally unsound means they had to prove I would be a detriment to those around me. Unsafe and a threat. And oh look, I was full of a whole bunch of tech that meant a civilian mental ward wouldn't be able to keep me. So the Project so graciously took responsibility for me."
"I have a different answer every time someone asks me where the things I toss in the portals end up. I know the game. Even why I'm blind in one eye, and that's how Wukong killed me so not exactly fun to think about. But if I start doing it with the number six, sooner or later I'll be caught off guard and I'll flinch. There's a reason I keep them covered unless I don't have a choice. And once while I was out with Red, but that was more about getting a reaction out of him." He grins shamelessly. Totally worth the staring and whispers.
Macaque follows the mood into something more soft and serious when Wash gets into Article 12. The Army brass sounds just like those assholes from Heaven. Moving real people around like chess pieces and not caring what happens to them on their watch. "...Damn. Gotta love bureaucracies when they do shit like that."
Wash hummed. "Well, nice to know you're comfortable enough with them to show off when properly motivated. I'm glad you have Red Son for that, at least," he said. David isn't a name he can hear all the time, but it had been a relief the day he realized when alone with Carolina, the Blues, and Reds, he could stand to hear it more often.
Its an important thing to be able to do.
"The UNSC isn't perfect, but they were trying their best. They tried to maintain some sense of order and ethics. But desperation allows for a high likelihood to not look too closely and hope something works. Anyone too blatant gets taken down, but those who know how to keep it close to the vest, they could get away with a lot. There was a lot of that. Some of it was malicious. Some of it was like the Project. Where there was good intent, but they took advantage of that blind eye. The fucked up thing is that was actually what helped win the war. Project Freelancer wasn't the one, but the one who kidnapped kids to experiment on ended up being the game changer. That was actually the project that figured out the processes that make up a lot of my own augmentation," he said. "But one of those kids, Masterchief, he'd been instrumental in ending the war. Both with the Covenant and the Flood."
"But that is a whole thing. I don't blame the UNSC for not looking close enough. They hadn't even noticed there was multiple AIs in the field when there should only be one. Not to mention all of the Agents that had gone MIA at that time. Them not getting too concerned about me being put into Project Freelancer's personal psychiatric ward isn't such a surprise. Especially when our concept was to mix an AI with a human brain, it was kind of expected go crazy could be a consequence," he said, tugging up Macaque's sleeve a bit to pet his arm fur.
"Not only him." That was just the one notable time in public. He'd have done the same with MK if they hadn't been going where they were going. "Choco encouraged me to take my glamours down at your place, which I will when I think of it. At this point I have to actively remember to leave them down rather than the opposite."
But since they're on the topic, down go the glamours. Ears and his eye (and others, one of which is a scar that will show when Wash rolls his sleeve up).
--Anyway, there are more horror stories to listen to-
"Kidnapping and experimenting on kids?!" Macaque practically growls it in a way that makes clear that it's a very good thing those particular assholes aren't in front of him right now.
He allows his sleeve to be tugged up, he's still stuck on a military kidnapping and experimenting on children. If Wash were to look up at his face right now, it looks scary as hell. But when the petting starts, he forces himself to relax. It's over and done with, and not really his right to be furious over.
"Good. I'm glad for you," he said. "And I'm not surprised. Even if she's having trouble with her stuff, she would never want anyone to feel like they have to hide themselves. She'd steal my helmet whenever she visited my world and knew it was a safe zone," he said. A brief pause. "She would steal it because she knows I won't fight her on it and recognize I may need the push."
"Yyyyeah, it was...a whole thing when it came out," Wash said. He's not happy about it either. But its also been a very long time since that all happened and came out, so he had his time to be horrified by it. What could be done, had been done. "Desperate people make desperate decisions. It doesn't make what they did okay by a long shot, but its the same reason I agreed to get another person shoved into my brain. If it meant planets would be glassed anymore, it seemed worth it. 'What is a few dozen kids compared to the billions who have died and will die?'"
Desperation at its very infest.
He runs his hand over Macaque's arm. Traces over the scar. Gently runs through the fur. "Glassing was orbital plasma bombardment. Any place on the planets surface that's hit will turn into Lechatelierite. Looks like glass. Destroys all life on the planet, plants included. Once the process has started, the only hope is to leave the planet. Even if the glassing ships are taken down, which was rare, the atmosphere will be too wrecked for life to keep living on it. And the only way to leave a planet is by ship. Which would be shot down, so forces had to focus on protecting those ships instead of trying to take down the Covenant ships. Glassing was Covenant procedure for any planet they found that was occupied by humans, unless there was a specific reason not to. Usually because there was Forerunner ruins somewhere on it. Ancient race the Covenant worshiped. Several billion civilians, they'd wipe out without a second thought, but one ancient pyramid? Then it was ground troops."
"I wish she wouldn't read into it. I wish no one would. It's about me and not about them, or how much I love them or trust them. But I know how easy it can be for people to get the wrong idea, so I'm trying to be better about it. For a given definition of better." Success varies according to a lot of factors.
Macaque doesn't especially want to hear more, not once the genocide starts. Not much turns his stomach, but that does. However, if Wash needs to say it, then the least he can do is listen.
"Not to state the obvious, but everything about that is fucked. Does it still happen?"
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Re: A couple days after the Questionable Coping
Macaque starts purring a bit, just to give Wash an example. (Also, it might be another thing that helps him relax.) It doesn't sound quite like a lion's purring, but definitely more wild and deeper than a housecat's.
"What, my fishing you out of that swimming pool when we first met didn't impress you sufficiently? I'd better step up my game." Since we're teasing here.
"You really have a perfect read on MK, not that I'm surprised. But I don't think he'd leave me behind, I just think he'd keep me around and resent me the whole time. And as for what I did..."
He hesitates.
"In the simulation, someone showed up. A power broker of a sort from Cole's world, someone who pulls strings about the happenings there. Cole can't remember most of what happened in the last little while because of more fey bullshit, so he asked this guy, who's a fey himself, to fill in some blanks. Started talking about how Cole died again, and a bunch of stuff that freaked me out. So the guy offered me a deal. He is limited as far as the influence he can have over their world's inhabitants because of rules he'd bound by, but I'm not bound by those rules. It's a deal that would let me go to their world to help Cole, try and keep him alive."
"I know fey deals are sketchy as hell, but what he wanted from me had loopholes so big you could drive a train through them. I can't see every angle since it's not my world, but it was the only thing I could do for Cole. He had me over a barrel and we both knew it. So I agreed. Cole pretty much lost it. I didn't know it then, but he has a history of not being able to stop bad things from happening to people he loves. I don't know if knowing that would have changed my mind, but it's done now. All I can do is make the best of it."
Re: A couple days after the Questionable Coping
"To be fair, Feather is the one who saw most of that," he said. "Though she does think you're cool, so there is that."
"MK isn't hard to read, once you get past the playing dumb thing to lighten the mood. That sort of thing has been barely white noise for me for a while, so the rest is pretty clear," he said. "I don't think he'd even go for resentment. Probably just be heartbroken."
There is a long pause at that because oh boy. Oh boy. "Honestly, I really can't blame Cole for freaking out. Even without the trauma, that would be a nightmare to watch go down."
"You in the habit of making terrible deals when feeling cornered about helping yoru people?"
Re: A couple days after the Questionable Coping
"--Ah, right." It had been unnerving as hell at the time, but now it's just a thing that happens, it's whatever. It's part of Wash and part of Choco, he's okay with it. Even MK has a whole other persona.
Macaque groans softly and scrubs at his face. "You get that heartbroken isn't better, right?"
Anyway, the meat of this is the deal he made. Macaque chuckles humorlessly. "I do have that habit, yes. Usually less deals and more just... choices. Even when I know it's not the best idea. The last time I did that, I was killed. The time before that, we launched a rebellion against Heaven. I'm better about it now than I used to be, but not by much, evidently. You don't want to know what sort of bullshit I'd sign up for if it had been Choco or Donnie instead of Cole."
Re: A couple days after the Questionable Coping
"It can be hard to track, I know. I don't usually share memories with Feather, it takes a while to untangle and communicate that effectively. Same with Ai-chan and Epsilon," he said. "If its a variation of 'me,' then I remember."
He hummed. "Resentment is combative. You can work with heartbroken, if you're brave enough."
He sighed. "Choco would have been in despair, and Donnie would have been incredibly mad. Donnie likes to find those tough solutions, its admirable. And Choco hates the whole kidnap thing and its reeking of that same lack of agency." He considers his hand a few moments, running his fingers over Macaque's.
"I don't know if you can get out of a fey deal once its made, but just so you don't make any other highly questionable deals, Choco and I can offer another solution when it comes to getting to other worlds," he said. "In Kyriakos, Epsilon had a teammate. Roxy Lalonde. In short, she's a creation void god. She steals nothingness from things to make them exist, objects, concepts, information, and she's intimately familiar with the space between universes. She's been helping Choco and I for a few years now when it comes to solving issues like being in the wrong universe."
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He watches Wash with his hand, not moving his own very much, just letting Wash do as he likes with it. "I'd rather avoid the whole thing altogether and make Cole better, if it's all the same to you. I've caused enough heartbreak in MK. In my defense, though, some of those were less a result of terrible choices I made and either terrible circumstances courtesy of the Lady Bone Demon eating me from the inside, or just differences in how we do things that took a while to work through." The brain surgery thing, that could definitely be called a result of terrible choices.
It's sobering to think of Choco or Donnie being upset that he tried to save their life. Isn't it just as much a lack of agency to stand there and be forced to do nothing while someone you love is in grave danger?
"I'm not sure if I can get out of the deal," he says quietly. He's not sure he wants to. "If it helps, the guy promised to use every power he has available to make sure I got out of there safely. He took a liking to me, so that probably also factors in. When I first walked in there all he wanted to do was kiss me, and I said I'd do it since he's the one who restored Cole to life, and it was just a kiss." No big deal.
He considers this information about their friend. "Maybe. It would be good to get in there and at least learn more about what I'm dealing with. Max would probably let me out of the deal if I play my cards right, explain that I was just done having my feelings entirely rearranged when I did that. Which is perfectly true, they still kick up weirdly now and then. He said that he wanted to hear me sing, he seemed lonely. It wouldn't hurt to ask if he'd modify the deal."
"I don't want to hurt Cole, I just like my chances of survival better than his. Especially with Max's protection."
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"Cole getting better is definitely the better outcome. Might see if he can think of alternatives, or find ways to make more anchors. Just for safety. Redundancies and all that," he said, thumbs tracing over his knuckles. "I think that's just proof you can work things out with MK, even with really huge fucks up, given time."
There is a difference between doing nothing and taking control of the situation whole cloth. Wash himself had more than once taken Choco's agency from her with his protectiveness. But he could never not try and she knew that, so it was all about balance.
"If he used the word 'promise,' it does help. Depending on what kind of fey he is, it can be really hard to say how things will play out, even with liking you. A fairy liking someone could be a benevolent as helping them to malicious as wanting to keep them in a jar for eternity."
"She's also got a 'hella stealth mode' as she puts it. You could get a lot of information, know the full of the things going on instead of going in blind," he said. "Hopefully Max is that readable, but never hurts to have a back up plan."
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Macaque is fine seeing where the chips fall. Hitting a reset button sounds just about perfect, actually. He doesn't want one moment of coping and negativity to guide anything they do from here on.
"He can't control how the pillars work, but if I were to vanish from here, for example, he'd have to get a new one somehow... this is the first time it's ever been a person, so I'm not sure he knows all he rules about it. I just want to deal with this, and then once he's better I can get into the weeds about it."
Macaque's fingers lift and lower in response to Wash thumbing over them, just idly moving his hand in response to touch stimuli.
"He did. Use that word, I mean." Cole insisted on it. "And me leaving their world to return to my own, or wherever I'd like to go, is part of the deal. Between the two, it's safe to say that I'll be leaving there alive. He can screw with a lot, but the language there was unambiguous. Cole wrote that part of the deal himself."
"I'll certainly take help with knowing what's going on. Specifically about what he wants me to do in exchange for the help I'd be providing to Cole. Like I said, there are loopholes there."
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"Sounds frustrating," he said. Frankly, it sounded like a nightmare. He ends up looking at the back of his hand for a few moments, where there is a rather fancy if oddly faded tattoo there.
Even Servants get to choose to a degree.
"But yeah. Making sure he's stable makes sense. Just don't forget you do have people to rely on to help. Donnie can figure out a lot of scans and clearly Red Son knows a bunch of magic stuff."
"Good. Don't get kidnapped by fairies. It sounds as annoying as desperate gods," he said. "After this place, I'll get you into contact with Roxy. You can figure things out. Fair warning, she....well, you don't look at her and think 'god.' She's got strong wild sorority girl vibes."
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"Yeah, it's frustrating. But mostly I'm just in a panic all the time." A small self-deprecating huff. "Cole said something to me the other day, that I do whatever I have to do if I think I need to for my people. He was talking about this deal, among other things. I know it wasn't all a compliment, but I don't know if I feel like it's true. If it was true, he wouldn't be in this mess."
--Kidnapped by desperate gods? He must mean this place, or the other words that stole him and Choco. "I mean, it's definitely not the plan. But she sounds like fun. Or at least, never boring."
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"He's right," Wash said, blunt and matter of fact. "Just because you're doing whatever you think you have to do doesn't mean you're doing the right thing. Its amazing how often being that desperate for your loved ones actually tends to lead people into a trashfire of a situation. I'm sure Tucker can give you an account of how many times he's had to tell me off for that practice."
He threads their fingers together. "You let me use you, even thought you believed it could ruin things at the same time. You wanted to help. It was the only way to feel like you could. Its a messy thing. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you get your teammates shaking you to stop doing it."
Fey, fairies, basically the same thing. "She is a delight. A little hard to follow with the old internet speak, but she is quite charming. A very sweet girl."
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Macaque says nothing for a moment as Wash laces their fingers. "Speaking from experience huh? I'm listening, for what it's worth." He is. He can't promise that he'll be less desperate to take action in the future, but he is hearing and remembering.
"Things get messy when feelings are involved. Always have. It's one thing that isn't any easier with old age."
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"Well now, just shoot all my hopes down, why don't you?" He said and he huffed.
Looking at their hands. Squeezing his.
"David."
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He laughs a bit at the disappointment. "Sorry. I've got to dispense some wisdom of my own now and then."
And then a name, and although Macaque can suspect what he's being told, he's not certain enough to not ask. He squeezes Wash's hand back.
"Hm?"
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"Names are important. They have ways of grounding," he said, thumb running over the side of Macaque's hand. "Some are stronger than others. Best way to get the most honest reaction out of me is David. If I'm still a royal asshole with that name, then things are dire. Usually it'll shake me and something will come out. It may not be a good reaction, whatever it is, but it'll be honest."
"David's my real name. And it does have to be David. You might have heard Nyssa try to use Davi-nii on me in the Heart and it didn't work. Choco was protecting it, I'm sure, keeping her from getting the full of it. Because Choco knows how much work I put into protecting everything connected to that name." All the parts that wouldn't have survived the combination of Epsilon and Article 12, not unless he buried them so deep that it became impossible for him to access that part for literal years.
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Macaque waits through the explanation, and is... touched. And a hint guilty, because Wash shouldn't have to rip himself open to stop Macaque from getting himself into bad situations. But mostly, it strikes him as a similar show of trust to letting his six ears show.
"Okay." He's being given permission to use that name in emergencies, and he'll do so sparingly. At the very least, considering using something so loaded as a way to jar Wash out of a mood might clue Macaque in that he needs to be careful. "Thank you."
"I wish I had a name of my own to give you, but I never got one of my own." He was called the Six-Eared Macaque because that's what described him, and to almost everyone around him, that's all he ever was.
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He nods and actually lifts up his hand, to kiss his knuckles. "You're giving a lot to help me," he said. So he wants to recognize that trust. And his name was a show of trust. It throws off a lot of his mental balancing acts, and its takes being in an incredibly safe place to hear it without some kind of mental kick.
"Its never too late to choose your own name," he said. "Or I could call you Sixer. Most people I know back home used some kind of nicknames or last names." Really, he was probably getting away with Wash as long as he has by virtue of the number of nicknames people use.
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That doesn't mean he's going to fight too hard about it. He just knows what Wash deserves from his perspective and it's a hell of a lot. "But... I'm glad you see me that way. Stupid choices and all."
"Referencing six might get people asking questions I don't want to answer if it's overheard. But... some people call me Mac for short." Which he never actually gave them permission to do, they just decided to and he was fine with it. This is the first time he's offering it.
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"Ah, but when people ask those questions, that's when you start making up bullshit. Its amazing how long you can avoid actually explaining the reasoning behind a nickname," he said with some amusement. "But Mac is good too."
He is still looking at his hand, tracing those slow circles. "The heart did also have guilt and having experience with how they function," he said. "Even if I hate them, having people just be reckless in a heart is worse. As for telling you...that I had to. One thing amnesia made clear is having a support system is vital for how bad it goes. Epsilon may have broken the class, but it was Article 12 that made all the pieces fall."
He shrugged. "As for the paying attention thing, I'm just good at details and also you and I have similar taste in food."
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Besides, turning the defining trauma of his life into a cute nickname and then getting potential stranger questions and then horseshit stories following from that, or at minimum having to think about the possibility, would be a lot for anyone. If he was that healthy a lot of things would be different.
"It doesn't really matter why you did all that stuff. You still did, and one of the reasons was to help me." He doesn't want to say it was the reason, since probably supporting Choco and Donnie was in there too, but it's good enough that wanting to help Macaque was a factor. "I'll have to pay closer attention to you so I can make some effort to keep up with repaying it all."
He pauses, thinking for a second, then decides it's not worth trying to bypass the obvious. Whether he says something or doesn't, Wash will know.
"Choco didn't tell me about Article 12. I'm not asking you to get into that if you don't want to, but just so you know I'm not familiar enough to follow."
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"It was one of the reasons, yeah," Wash said. It was also helping someone important to Choco and Donnie, but for all Wash can be an utter bastard...he does like helping people. He cares about people and wants to make the world better. It was why he joined the army in the first place. To help keep people safe, because he was good at what he did, and the army needed people.
He just gets a lot more tired about saving people these days after all the bullshit, but that part of him isn't gone. It just needs more breaks.
"To be fair, I'm not hard to figure out. These days. Choco, the guys, and Carolina have done a fuckton to get me to not ride so hard on my bullshit. At least out of high stress situations," he said. Its honestly really weird NOT having something potentially trying to kill him every other day and he has to remind himself to not become a paranoid asshole about it.
...honestly, Donnie's security system is helping him fight that impulse A LOT.
He hummed. "It was hard to say if she did. It might even take her a bit to put the pieces together, though I'm sure she will at some point," he said. "Article 12 is Leave of Absence from the military. It can be for various reasons, but mine was 'unfit for duty due to mental instability.' Until I could pass a psyche eval, I couldn't rejoin the army. Now, keep in mind, at this point? The army was desperate for bodies. We were in a war that threatened the extinction of the entire human race and we were still losing at that point. To be declared mentally unsound means they had to prove I would be a detriment to those around me. Unsafe and a threat. And oh look, I was full of a whole bunch of tech that meant a civilian mental ward wouldn't be able to keep me. So the Project so graciously took responsibility for me."
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Macaque follows the mood into something more soft and serious when Wash gets into Article 12. The Army brass sounds just like those assholes from Heaven. Moving real people around like chess pieces and not caring what happens to them on their watch. "...Damn. Gotta love bureaucracies when they do shit like that."
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Its an important thing to be able to do.
"The UNSC isn't perfect, but they were trying their best. They tried to maintain some sense of order and ethics. But desperation allows for a high likelihood to not look too closely and hope something works. Anyone too blatant gets taken down, but those who know how to keep it close to the vest, they could get away with a lot. There was a lot of that. Some of it was malicious. Some of it was like the Project. Where there was good intent, but they took advantage of that blind eye. The fucked up thing is that was actually what helped win the war. Project Freelancer wasn't the one, but the one who kidnapped kids to experiment on ended up being the game changer. That was actually the project that figured out the processes that make up a lot of my own augmentation," he said. "But one of those kids, Masterchief, he'd been instrumental in ending the war. Both with the Covenant and the Flood."
"But that is a whole thing. I don't blame the UNSC for not looking close enough. They hadn't even noticed there was multiple AIs in the field when there should only be one. Not to mention all of the Agents that had gone MIA at that time. Them not getting too concerned about me being put into Project Freelancer's personal psychiatric ward isn't such a surprise. Especially when our concept was to mix an AI with a human brain, it was kind of expected go crazy could be a consequence," he said, tugging up Macaque's sleeve a bit to pet his arm fur.
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But since they're on the topic, down go the glamours. Ears and his eye (and others, one of which is a scar that will show when Wash rolls his sleeve up).
--Anyway, there are more horror stories to listen to-
"Kidnapping and experimenting on kids?!" Macaque practically growls it in a way that makes clear that it's a very good thing those particular assholes aren't in front of him right now.
He allows his sleeve to be tugged up, he's still stuck on a military kidnapping and experimenting on children. If Wash were to look up at his face right now, it looks scary as hell. But when the petting starts, he forces himself to relax. It's over and done with, and not really his right to be furious over.
"Yeah, those guys are just like Heaven."
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"Yyyyeah, it was...a whole thing when it came out," Wash said. He's not happy about it either. But its also been a very long time since that all happened and came out, so he had his time to be horrified by it. What could be done, had been done. "Desperate people make desperate decisions. It doesn't make what they did okay by a long shot, but its the same reason I agreed to get another person shoved into my brain. If it meant planets would be glassed anymore, it seemed worth it. 'What is a few dozen kids compared to the billions who have died and will die?'"
Desperation at its very infest.
He runs his hand over Macaque's arm. Traces over the scar. Gently runs through the fur. "Glassing was orbital plasma bombardment. Any place on the planets surface that's hit will turn into Lechatelierite. Looks like glass. Destroys all life on the planet, plants included. Once the process has started, the only hope is to leave the planet. Even if the glassing ships are taken down, which was rare, the atmosphere will be too wrecked for life to keep living on it. And the only way to leave a planet is by ship. Which would be shot down, so forces had to focus on protecting those ships instead of trying to take down the Covenant ships. Glassing was Covenant procedure for any planet they found that was occupied by humans, unless there was a specific reason not to. Usually because there was Forerunner ruins somewhere on it. Ancient race the Covenant worshiped. Several billion civilians, they'd wipe out without a second thought, but one ancient pyramid? Then it was ground troops."
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Macaque doesn't especially want to hear more, not once the genocide starts. Not much turns his stomach, but that does. However, if Wash needs to say it, then the least he can do is listen.
"Not to state the obvious, but everything about that is fucked. Does it still happen?"
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