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After everything—after she’d placed Wash’s pistol on the table, after she’d turned her back and walked away, when everyone was asleep and Epsilon was pulled out of her head—something they’d both agreed was a good idea, after everything that happened, the Red soldier came to talk to her.
He sat down next to her loudly, every step broadcasted clearly. She could have told him off, told him to go away, but she didn’t. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t say them. She didn’t know how. She didn’t want to.
She didn’t look at him, instead staring at the dirt in front of her, trying to get her mother’s last words out of her head.
Don’t say goodbye. I hate goodbyes.
A helmet dropped into her vision, and she finally looked up.
The face she was looking into was old and grizzled and scarred. A scraggly beard covered his face and his eyes were a keen, intelligent brown that had a manic gleam. The few traces of hair and beard and mustache that weren’t completely given in to grey were ginger.
“Nearly didn’t recognize you for a while there,” he said, his voice as gruff and Southern as ever, and Carolina hesitated for a moment before removing her own helmet, shaking her dyed red hair out and letting it drop, where it landed beside his.
“I wasn’t sure you had,” she admitted, finally meeting his eyes. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. It had been a very long time, and she knew she looked very different.
He grinned at her. “’course I did,” he said gruffly. “What kind of a man wouldn’t recognize his own daughter?”
She bit down on her lip and he frowned, realizing what he’d done. He reached over and squeezed her shoulder, like he’d done when she was a kid. “You deserved better,” he told her.
“Why didn’t—” She made herself stop, ducking her head. He’d come. They’d all come. And she’d been wrong, trying to push them, she knew that, but…
“Revenge ain’t worth it,” he told her, tiredly. “Never was. All it gets ya is more aches and pains, and sometimes you lose even more along the way.” He glanced at her. “I lost you once. Wasn’t going to lose my boys.”
Carolina flinched under the weight of his words. She glanced over towards the rest of the Sim Troopers, specifically at the Reds. Grif, the orange one. Simmons, maroon. And the pink one, whose name she didn’t know. Had she even seen him before? She shook the thought off, and wondered about them, really wondered about them, for the first time.
He squeezed her shoulder again, and she ridiculously wished they were both out of armor, so she could really feel it. So she could feel the callouses on his hands again and she could just… be. A kid. His daughter. Not a soldier. Not a woman who lay in the snow with an empty head and realized she’d thrown everything away for a father who’d never cared, who wasn’t coming for her.
“He said—” She choked out, each word harder than the last to say. “He said I was his greatest creation.”
Sarge growled. “Why that dang-nabbit lily-livered cowardly sonuva blue! That’s nothing but hogwash! What a load of codswallop! Horse manure! You’re not his creation. And he’s got nothin’ to do with how you turned out! That’s all you! And maybe a bit of me and yer ma. But mostly you!”
Carolina’s shoulders slumped, and all she wanted to do was curl up and let herself fall to pieces. She could, she knew. He wouldn’t tell anyone, wouldn’t even say a word about it. He’d let her fall apart and he’d help her pick herself back together when it was done, like he had when she was a kid, in a new strange house, missing her father and mourning her mother and not knowing how to handle any of this.
But it was too public, too raw, too fresh. She’d do it later, when the Reds and Blues and Wash weren’t sleeping nearby. She could make it until then. She was strong enough.
If the last few years had proved anything, it was that she was strong enough.
“Dad,” she whispered, and god she’d missed saying that.
He smiled at her fondly. “Go to sleep, kiddo,” he told her. “I’ll keep watch.”
He’d always been Sarge, she remembered that. He’d been one of her mother’s friends, drifting in and out of her early life. A vague presence, loud and gruff and boisterous. Everyone called him Sarge, except her father, who always called him “Sergeant” with a vaguely annoyed tone.
He’d been tall and broad, and Carolina had loved to climb onto his back and trace the outlines of his tattoos with her fingers. He had so many of them. His hair had been pure ginger in those days, and Carolina had fingered her own blonde hair and wished to be a red head like him, because she loved the way it looked.
His wife was Josephine, and she was pretty, with thick black hair that she let Carolina braid and a bright, cheerful laugh. They had two sons—one was Lopez, older than Carolina, who preferred to speak Spanish over English, and grumbled whenever he was forced to. The other was Boomstick, which a five year old Carolina thought was the coolest name ever, and was two years younger than her, loud and inquisitive and demanding attention at all times. Carolina liked them. They weren’t her favorites of her mother’s friends, but they were pretty high up there.
Sarge was deployed a lot, just like Mom. They weren’t in the same unit these days, but they’d served together in the past. Sarge had the same tattoo as Mom on his left shoulder blade. It looked like a cobra, coiled and ready to strike, in bright red ink.
Dad and Sarge fought a lot, but Mom always intervened, laughing and arguing with both of them, telling them they were being silly. Carolina never understood what they were arguing about anyway. Josephine told her it was usually machines. And maybe, in those days, that was all it was.
And then one day there was a man at the door, and Carolina learned that she would never see her mother again.
Sarge was on tour when he got the word about Allison.
He poured out a drink that night—whiskey, Allison’s favorite, and called home.
“Dad!” Boomstick’s face was the first thing Sarge saw, and Sarge grinned.
“Boom! Where’s your brother?”
“Aqui,” Lopez said, nudging his brother out of the way. “Mama es en la cocina, Papa. Ella viene. ¿Por qué está llamando? Se llama a los sábados A las 12 de la tarde, hora del centro.”
“Ah, Lopez,” Sarge chuckled. “You know I don’t speak Spanish! Besides, does an old man need an excuse to call his family?”
Lopez rolled his eyes at the old joke, and switched to English. “Dad,” he grumbled. “That joke wasn’t funny the first time.”
“Yes it was,” Sarge said cheerfully, as Josephine entered the camera.
“Stop teasing your son,” she said, ruffling Lopez’s hair and grabbing Boomstick and placing him on her lap. “What happened?”
Sarge felt his smile wither. “Allison’s dead, Josie.”
“Auntie Allison?” Boomstick demanded, brown eyes wide.
“Oh no,” Josephine whispered. “Poor Leonard. Poor Linda.”
“You should go to the funeral,” Sarge said, wearily. “I won’t be able to make it.”
“Right, of course,” Josephine murmured. “I’ll call around.”
Lopez looked stricken. “You’re coming home soon now dad, right?”
“Promise, son,” Sarge said. “Soon.”
When the tour was over, Sarge had two stops to make before he went home. One was the graveyard.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at the grave. “Got promoted, huh?” He asked the slab of marble. “Good on ya’, Ally.” He took a quarter out of his pocket. “Guess you won that bet then.” He bent over and pressed the quarter into the dirt, shifting the flowers to hide the hole.
Then he turned around and went to visit her husband and kid.
Linda opened the door when he knocked. He frowned. Her hair was chopped unevenly, like she’d done it herself. Why was Leonard letting her run around with her hair looking like that? She should have just come back from school, and the cut didn’t look all that fresh.
“Hey kiddo!” Sarge said. “Your dad in?”
“Yes,” Linda said, and then bit her lip. “But he’s not seeing people.”
Sarge frowned, but then forced a smile onto his face. “Well then! Let’s see if we can change that.”
The house was a disaster. In the kitchen there were stools and boxes everywhere, stacked up to allow an eight year old to reach everything. Sarge swallowed, feeling something hot and furious building in his chest.
He’s mourning, he reminded himself as he made his way to the study. He lost his wife.
But his kid had lost her mother, the rest of Sarge protested. He should be doing better.
“Why don’t you go play outside, kiddo?” Sarge suggested, doing his best to squash his temper. “Your dad and I might be a while.”
She gave him a look, and man did those bright green eyes cut right through him. “He’s okay,” she whispered. “Really.”
Sarge frowned, and then looked at her. “No he’s not, kiddo. But he’s going to get better. I’m sure of it.”
He pushed open the door to Doctor Leonard Church’s study and went in there to give that sonuvabitch a piece of his mind.
Carolina didn’t know what was said in the study.
All she knew was that when she came back in, Sarge had a bloody nose, and was grinning at her.
“Your dad and I agreed that you’ll be stayin’ with me and Josie for a few days, little missy! Just until your dad can get his head on straight.”
Carolina frowned. “Why?”
Sarge raised his eyebrows at her. “’cuz you’ve been eating nothing but macaroni and cheese for the past week, from the look of the garbage can! You need meat, kid! Build up your muscles!”
“I thought that was vegetables,” she said, but she was wavering. Josephine was a good cook. And if it was just for a little while…
“It’ll be like a sleepover,” Sarge promised her. “We’ll pull out a spare mattress and you can sleep on Boom or Lopez’s floor.”
Carolina finally nodded, glancing at the door to her father’s study, which was closed tight again. Light poured out from underneath it, showing that her father wasn’t even standing on the other side. “Okay,” she whispered, and went to pack a bag.
She wouldn’t go back to that house for a long, long time.
Weeks passed. Carolina stayed.
Josephine went back to the house to get the rest of Carolina’s things, and checked on Leonard. It was, Carolina and Lopez learned while eavesdropping on the adult conversations, becoming a regular thing among Allison’s old friends, checking in on Leonard Church to make sure he wasn’t dead or forgetting to feed himself.
Carolina curled up into a tiny ball, leaning against Lopez, because that had been her job. She wanted to go home, wanted to make sure that she’d see him again, that he wouldn’t just vanish like her mother had.
She didn’t ask Josephine if her father missed her. She just watched as she moved from the floor of Boomstick’s room to the room that had once been a spare bedroom, and all of her things from home slowly made its way into it. She helped Sarge paint the walls bright colors and put her old sheets on her bed and didn’t cry.
Carolina did like a lot of things about living with Sarge and Josephine. Josephine made good food, and Sarge wasn’t bad either, on the nights that Josephine worked late. Sarge loved to fry chicken and to use the big grill in the backyard, and he made Southern comfort food that Carolina remembered eating with her mother.
It was nice having company close to her own age, and she quickly picked up Spanish to keep up with Lopez’s rapid fire ranting and raving. Boomstick got in trouble a lot for explosions in the house and at school, but Carolina liked it. It was fun.
But it wasn’t her house, with the porch that Mom was supposed to climb up any day now, and then everything would go back to normal. Dad wasn’t there. The bookcases were filled with car magazines and novels instead of scientific literature.
“Why isn’t he getting better?” Carolina demanded, kicking the wall. “You said he’d get better!”
“I thought he would,” Sarge admitted. “I was wrong.” He knelt down to look at her, and she hated it. “Sometimes bad things happen, kid. And it breaks people, cracks them right down the middle.” He tapped her chest with his finger. “An’ they can’t be fixed. That’s the problem with people, ya see. We’re not like machines. Can’t just fix it up when things go wrong in the chasis. And it means they can’t look after people ‘cuz they can barely look after themselves. They don’t know how.”
“He hasn’t called!” Carolina said, balling her hands into fists. She didn’t care about his explanations or his excuses or want to hear him talk about her dad. “I want to go home!”
Sarge looked at her, oddly serious, and she didn’t like it. “Linda,” and his use of her real name quieted her. “As long as you want it, this can be home.”
Carolina wanted to scream. “But he’s my dad!” She finally cried out, and a sob escaped.
Sarge’s arms wrapped around her, and she started crying harder as she spotted that cobra tattoo on his back. “I know, kid,” he whispered as she clung to him, shaking and sobbing. “I know.”
Years passed. Carolina joined the track team, and the boxing league, and learned to shoot a shotgun from Sarge in the back yard. She got into fights at school, and Sarge bandaged up her hands, laughing and complimenting her technique while Josephine fussed.
And then when Carolina was fourteen, Josephine died in a car crash.
Carolina cried in the safety of her room, and wrote to her dad for the first time in years that day, asking him to come to the funeral.
He didn’t come, and Carolina hugged Sarge even harder as they buried Josephine.
She watched Sarge very closely as the days passed, waiting for him to start locking himself away, to stop talking, to avoid them.
He didn’t do any of that, and Carolina didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t doing it right.
He cried a lot, and was sleepy a lot, but he got out of bed at least once a day and he hugged them all, and if he didn’t feel like cooking he ordered pizza for all of them and they ate on the couch, flopped in front of the TV, watching Grifball but not paying attention to what was happening.
Finally, Carolina snapped.
“Why aren’t you doing it?” She demanded. “Why… why aren’t you being like him?”
Sarge glanced at her, and his eyes were so tired that she felt bad, but she had to know. It wasn’t… it wasn’t fair that he wasn’t being like her father.
He brushed her hair out of her face, and then cupped her chin in his hand. “Everyone deals differently, squirt,” he told her. “Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. I do. Every day.”
Carolina balled her hands into fists at her side. “It’s not right!”
“No,” Sarge said, pulling her against his chest. “It’s not.”
A year later, Lopez joined the army.
“I’ll be fine, Dad,” Lopez said, looking awkward and gangly in his uniform. Carolina can’t help but compare him to her memories of her mother, who looked comfortable and graceful and at home in her uniform.
“Ser seguro, hijo. Haznos sentir orgullosos. Te quiero,” Sarge said, hugging Lopez tightly.
“I will,” Lopez grinned at Carolina and mussed up her hair. “I’ll see you soon, blondie,” he said.
“Bet I’ll be a better soldier than you,” Carolina declared, sticking out her tongue.
“You’ll be the best,” Lopez assured her with a laugh, and walked out the door, waving over his shoulder as he ran to catch the waiting bus.
Five days into her own basic training, Carolina would get a letter telling her about a bombing gone wrong.
Sarge stared at the man on his doorstep, and Boomstick had to lunge to catch his arm before he could punch the man in the face.
“Dad! Don’t!”
Sarge let his arm drop. “She’s dead?” He asked. He felt cold inside. Tired. Old. Very old.
“Yes,” the man said, and it was just like when Lopez had died, the exact same thing, the exact same words, and nothing was ever going to be okay again. “I’m sorry.”
Sarge slammed the door in the man’s face.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, numb.
“Dad,” Boomstick said, as Sarge brushed past him, heading towards his bedroom.
Sarge paused, and hugged Boomstick tightly. “Yer a good kid,” he muttered.
Boomstick hugged him back. “Dad. What are you thinking?”
Sarge leaned back. “I’m enlisting again,” he growled. “Those alien sons-of-bitches killed two of my kids. Time I get some payback.”
“Dad,” Boomstick said, eyes tight. “You’re too old.”
“They’ll find a use for me,” Sarge said, waving off his son’s protests. “Besides! You’re shipping out next week.”
Boomstick looked guilty. “I was going to tell you,” he said, shifting. “I swear!”
“Science division! I couldn’t be prouder,” Sarge clasped Boomstick on the shoulder, pretending that he wasn’t on the verge of tears. “You’ll do your job, son. And I’ll do mine. Don’t worry about me!”
Boomstick saluted. “Yes, sir!”
Sarge then went in to the room he’d shared with Josephine, once upon a time, and cried.
When Carolina joined Project Freelancer, she wrote a quick note.
Dr. Leonard Church has asked me to be a part of his project. Can’t say much else. Love you.
He gave her the name Agent Carolina. She liked it. It flowed well. Carolina.
He didn’t say anything about the way she dyed her hair a bright red.
But he was there and present and alive. A part of her wanted to run back in time and scoop up her past self, take her to the ship and show her that, yes, he did get better! Things were okay!
She wanted to write to Sarge, telling him that he was wrong, that the Director had come around after all, that he’d figured things out.
She felt bad sometimes, about how gleeful she felt, soaking in his presence, in the fact that he acknowledged her, looked at her. It felt like a betrayal to Sarge, somehow.
She was the best in the whole project. She fought and scrapped her way to the top of the heap and she heard how he described her. “Our top operative. The only one I can trust with this.” Her heart swelled with pride.
“Agent Carolina,” the Director said. He’d never called her by her real name. (In her quiet, doubtful moments, she wondered if he even remembered it.)
It was an interview session, to see how the program was going. She felt awkward, sitting across from him, the desk separating them. It reminded her vaguely of family dinners when Mom had just shipped out. She wanted to ask him so many questions, to figure out every single thing that he’d done since she’d left the house. Why had he never written? Had she done something wrong?
She looked at him, curious. “Yes, Director?”
“Have you heard from…” his lip curled into an expression of sheer hatred that threw Carolina off guard. “The Sergeant?”
“No sir,” she said, pretending it didn’t hurt to say. Sarge probably was mad that she was with her father. He was never really happy with him, got angry sometimes when he came up in conversation. Carolina understood why, but she didn’t pretend it didn’t hurt that he and Boomstick weren’t writing. Well, she’d never really expected Boom to write. He wasn’t much for letters.
“Unsurprising,” the Director said, looking at her over his glasses. “That man never understood progress.”
She glanced at him, caught on how their accents diverged. The two were similar in so many ways. And yet they were so different.
“He can be difficult. Sir,” she added, quickly averting her eyes. She hated the fact that her two fathers couldn’t stand each other. It made her feel like she had to choose. Which wasn’t fair. But then again, when had anything in her life been fair?
“He’s an obstinate fool,” the Director said coldly. “It’s probably for the best.” He glanced to one side, distracted by something on one of the screens. “Dismissed,” he said, not even looking at her, and Carolina wondered again, what she’d done wrong.
She ignored it, when she first saw him. It was a coincidence. The name was a rank, after all, and Southern accents were common enough. And her… Sarge was a real soldier, a decorated ODST, not a Simulation Trooper.
But she learned better quickly enough, and she wanted to scream, because the Director had to have known, had to have done this on purpose. He’d taken the man who’d given her a home and a family and broken him. He’d taken his service—years of honorable, distinguished service—and made it a joke. Turned his entire career into a punchline, and for what?
She added him to her mental list of her father’s sins, and worked even harder to find the Director.
But now, she woke up, with her dad keeping watch, whistling softly as the sun began to rise.
“He told you I was dead, didn’t he?” Carolina rasped, even as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes.
Sarge nodded. “Mighty fine funeral. Boomstick set half the block on fire.”
Carolina let out a small laugh, but her eyes were tearing up. “How is he?”
“He’s in the science division!” Sarge said proudly. “Doing theoretical mash-ups and hypothetical death battle whats-its. Found himself a partner too! Not sure in what sense, but he sounds pretty content these days!”
Carolina nodded, and got to her feet. Her joints all ached. She felt old. She wondered how Sarge felt, having not slept all night.
“Like what you did with your hair,” Sarge added. “Good color. Knew you would have been a Red.
She laughed, and then felt her storage unit buzz, reminding her about Epsilon. She held Epsilon’s chip in her hands. “Did you know?” She asked. “Did you realize?”
“Nah,” Sarge said, with a forced lightness that Carolina didn’t like. “Church was a dirty Blue, but he wasn’t the same kind of no-good, squeaky clean, lily-hands scientist that yer old man was. Different character, y’know.”
“And Tex?”
Sarge let out an honest laugh. “Her? She wasn’t Allison. Didn’t fight like Allison, that was for sure. I’d have recognized an Allison asskicking any-old day. Any time, any place. It was distinctive! One of a kind! Guess Leonard never quite got that down.” He put his helmet back on. “She was her own woman—never stood for Church telling her what to do, so I can’t imagine she’da taken someone telling her who to be much better. Might have started out as a copy but I can’t imagine she’d have stayed that way for long! She wouldn’t have stood for it.”
Carolina stared at Epsilon’s chip. “Wash doesn’t know, does he?”
Sarge squinted at her. “Why would Agent Stick-in-the-mud know?”
Carolina closed her mouth. That wasn’t her story to tell. “Nevermind.”
“Nobody knows!” Sarge said cheerfully, rapping his knuckles against his helmet. “And nobody has to if you want it that way.”
Carolina glanced at the still-sleeping Reds and Blues.
“Maybe later,” she whispered. Then she had a thought. “Can we go find him? Boom? Now it’s all done?”
Sarge grinned at her and ruffled her hair. “Fussy britches,” he said, “We can do whatever you like.”
Carolina snorted at the nickname and shoved him away playfully. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m a father! Why, over the top nicknames are practically in the job description!”
Carolina ducked her head and laughed.
“Why,” she asked him, months later, on a planet named Chorus. “Why do you have a Spanish speaking robot named Lopez, and why does he seem to think you don’t speak Spanish?”
Sarge chuckled. “Ha! Classic.”
“You speak Spanish. Fluently.”
“That’s why it’s classic!”
Carolina groaned. “That old joke?”
“Ah, c’mon!” Sarge grinned. “You loved it as a kid.”
“Yes, but I don’t think the robot knows it’s a joke!”
Sarge snorts. “Ah, c’mon! Sure he does.”
“When I said I spoke Spanish he nearly cried and tried to hug me. Robots can’t cry, Dad.”
Sarge looked a bit perturbed by that. “Well that’s Lopez for you! Breaking barriers.”
“Dad.”
“Eh, I’m sure he knows.”
“I really, really doubt that,” Carolina said. She paused. “I can’t believe you named a robot after him.”
“Lopez?” Sarge shook his head at her. “He’s not just a robot, little missy. He’s family.”
Carolina wanted to shout at him that it wasn’t the same. But she bit her tongue. He knew that. But he loved the robot too, in his own, strange way.
She’d just have to accept that she now had a robot for a brother as well as an AI.
“What do you mean, you’re joining Red Team?” Wash demanded, squinting at Carolina.
“Sorry Wash,” Carolina said lightly, stealing his apple and taking a bite out of it. “They made a compelling argument.”
“El sargento se ofreció a trenzar el pelo. Eso no es un argumento,” Lopez grumbled.
“It’s going to be awesome,” Donut sang.
“You wear blue armor!” Wash protested.
“I can change it if I want to,” Carolina pointed out, mouth twitching. Wash snatched his apple back.
“Why are you doing this to me?” He groaned.
“Sorry Wash,” she said, picking up her tray. “Family loyalty.”
“That’s my girl,” Sarge said, and then the penny dropped.
“What?” Carolina wasn’t sure who went higher there, Simmons or Wash.
“Why is everyone here secretly related?” Tucker yelled. “First Grif and Sister, then Church and you—”
“Kai wasn’t a secret!”
Wash was staring at Sarge like he’d never seen him before. “Oh my god,” he muttered, pale as a sheet.
Carolina wondered what memories of Sarge he had just connected to the Sarge he knew. She grinned.
“Be honest, how long have you been waiting to drop that bomb?” Epsilon asked, appearing on her shoulder.
“Too long,” she said gleefully.
“Can’t believe you went Red on me. Traitor.”
Carolina glanced over at Sarge, who had started to berate Grif and Simmons for their shenanigans.
“Suck it Blue,” she said, and Sarge paused to beam at her proudly.