[ the open york post: comeback edition ]

[neverknocks]

hello welcome to the very specific genderbent au york i have been playing for like 15 years this is the only york i play now



Agent York // Natalie van der Haast (AU)
AGENT YORK - AU INFO
Name: Natalie van der Haast
Background: Grew up in south Jersey with three older brothers, a piano teacher for a mom, and an auto mechanic for a dad. Comfortable upbringing, though she got into her fair share of trouble growing up. May or may not have joined Project Freelancer as an alternative to other punitive measures in response to some questionable things she may or may not have done with classified information as a soldier.

LOOKING FOR...
Gen: Action (I LOVE to write action/fight scenes), AI drama (gotta have it), mystery and plot intrigue, h/c as long as it's also kinda funny. Missions and heist shit. I love heist shit soooo much I can't get enough of it
Ships: My main ship interests are Wash, Carolina, and Maine, but I can be sold on most York ships. finger guns
I also love a stupid drama triangle, especially when one of them has been dead for a while

I'm down for both shippy stuff and gen threads and I'm down for smut. Feel free to throw down a top level with whatever your heart desires, but here are some prompts to help get the ideas goin'

CANON POINTS
Project Freelancer: Pretty much any canon point in here is golden. Great for actiony missions and AI drama. And also of course the high concentration of pure Freelancer drama.
Post-Freelancer/Out of Mind: That (mumbles)-year period when she's out planet-hopping looking in search of Carolina until she meets her untimely demise at the hands of Wyoming. that ass hole
Recovery One: Yeah yeah York is dead at this point but hey. What if she wasn't

YORK LIVES AUS
The staple of every York player. Here are some of my favorite scenarios to work from but I am ALWAYS down to try new things
Out of Mind/Recovery One: Wash (or someone else!) gets to York before she fully kicks it and patches her back up. And then it's unfinished business time (of both the Carolina and/or Maine variety). Or Freelancer Drama: Electric Boogaloo.
Chorus (option A): York goes to prison for Freelancer Crimes instead of dying and winds up on the Tartarus. Now she's working with Felix and Locus to take out Wash and Carolina. Bonus AI brain trauma from having Delta removed. Freelancer drama cubed.
Chorus (option B): By whatever bulllshit means, York is brought back to life on Chorus somehow. It's been a while since I watched the Chorus trilogy but isn't there something funky with portals in those seasons? idk it's not important. It's RVB anything is possible. The point is: opportunity for really really rich Freelancer drama when your dead friend for whom you've grieved is suddenly back in your life. Also York and Tucker are funny

MISC AUS/PROMPTS
AI Swap: York draws the short straw and gets Epsilon instead of Delta. Things go about as well for her as they did for Wash in canon, but differently bad. Who's here for some hardcore dissociation. Optionally: York is Recovery One.
Ejection Trauma: York loses Delta for one reason or another (AI recall during Project Freelancer. The Meta gets to Delta but she survives. Some other third thing. Take your pick) and transitioning to being alone in your own head is really fucking hard. Who's here for even more hardcore dissociation
Texting: who needs a log when you could do a tfln
Setting Swap: Project Freelancer is very easy to AU into other settings. Like soooo easy. Hit me up I love Project Freelancer setting AUs.

Feel free to hit me up at runawayballista for plotting!

Comments

chorus, option a-ish

[slaughterous]

They're in space when something goes wrong with the ship. Which is precisely the worst place to be, but here they fucking are. A prison barge full of some of the UNSC's worst—or just most broken—individuals.

The Meta (is he anymore? or is he Maine, the man who came before?) sits quietly in his cell. Quiet, just as he has been since his broken body was fished from the icy waters of Sidewinder, his armor having just barely kept him alive. Quiet, because there's no noise in his head anymore. No voices, no orders, no anything. Just him and his thoughts. Not even Wash around to tell him what to do.

There's a commotion outside. Gunshots. A hijacking. The Meta continues to sit quietly, waiting for something to happen. Something that penetrates the foggy veil that has settled around him, the rest of the world feeling so distant it may as well be completely fake.

It takes a long damn while for the noise to stop. Then there are voices outside. Something about the lock on his cell being different. Needing a manual override. Curiosity as to who is inside. More voices, one a woman's. Familiar-sounding.

The Meta raises his head, staring at the door. Then it opens.

YESSSS (i'm running with the notion that they used to hook up during freelancer)

[neverknocks]

"What'd I tell you?" comes a voice from the other side of the door, self-congratulatory as hell. "Best in my field. You'd think they'd look past a few war crimes for these skills."

The voice is familiar, and so is the face once the door opens — the bad eye, the cocked grin, the easy swagger in the way she moves. Tension rides in her shoulders the way it never did back in Freelancer, and there's a hardness to her face that's got nothing to do with the passage of time. No armor — not yet, anyway — still in these stupid fucking prison pajamas, but there's no mistaking her for anyone else.

It's been a while since they last laid eyes on each other. She heard he went fully off the deep end after that crash, ripping Carolina's AI implants right out of her head before going on a murderous rampage tracking all the fragments down. The Meta. Jesus. Back in the day, she'd have felt some way about that — that would've bothered her, been several bridges too far, and it probably should bother her now. But they took Delta away from her a long time ago, and there's still a crater in her mind where he used to be, and somehow, she just can't scrounge up any sympathy for long-dead comrades. She's not sure it was ever even really him behind all of it. Sigma was a crafty little motherfucker.

The truth — which she'd understood long before they put her in a prison cell — was that no one in Project Freelancer really gave a fuck about what happened to either of them so long as they were behind bars now. The grenade to her face, the shots to his throat — old scars by now, but she's sure Maine will never forget that mission, same as she'll never forget the ringing in her ears before the pain set in. The only reason Maine had Sigma to speak for him was Carolina passing on him in the first place. And in the end, what the fuck did Freelancer camaraderie amount to, anyway? Wash and Carolina getting a handshake and a pat on the ass and fuck everyone else, apparently.

When she smiles at him, she shows teeth.

"Hey there, big guy."

She takes a step into his cell. No one else does. She knows that if he wanted her dead, hanging back in the doorway sure as hell isn't gonna stop him.

"Now what's a crazy son of a bitch like you doing in a place like this?"

[slaughterous]

Light comes through the door, landing on him, rendering those outside in silhouette. The Meta narrows his eyes, watching. Searching for the owner of that single familiar voice amid so many unfamiliar ones.

He recognizes her silhouette first. Tall, athletic—just his type. Always was. A part of him that feels like someone else (Maine, his name was Maine) stirs. Wants to get up and greet that swagger with swagger, start the dance that would often end with sweaty sheets and a feeling of contentment that was hard to find elsewhere in the Project.

York, something in the back of his mind whispers. Her name is York.

York shows teeth. The fine hairs on the Meta's nape rise. He rises with them, straightening to his full height—seven feet of muscle, even if there's a little less of the latter than before.

(Funny how getting shot in the throat kills one's appetite.)

She calls him crazy. He doesn't object. Just gives his surroundings a critical look. Makes a disgusted tch with his tongue, meaning: Didn't pick this shithole.

[neverknocks]

Her grin widens, her one good eye tracking him as he rises to his full height. She wonders if the mercs who hijacked this ship have any clue what they've got in this cell.

"Yeah, me neither. Seems like the two of us have a real knack for ending up in shitholes and dumpster fires."

She doesn't know how much of Maine is really left in there. She figures she'll find out pretty soon. The answer has to at least be some, though — she knows he recognizes her, remembers her. That's something. She finds, oddly enough, that it's kind of comforting.

"Ship's changed destination. Kind of headed to a dumpster fire situation, but we got a pretty good shot of getting gone for good."

Meaning that if they play along with the new owners of this ship, they'll come out of it with enough cash to disappear themselves out of the UNSC's reach. Well — even if they don't, she's always been good at finding cash when she needs it. There's a glint in her eye, familiar but changed, sharper than it used to be. She jerks her head back toward the door.

"How about you and me get outta here?"

[slaughterous]

Dumpster fire situation, huh? That's nothing unfamiliar. It feels like the last few years have been a dumpster fire of some sort. Although, it's hard to tell if it's really been years. Hard to tell time in general, now that real fire (comforting, scorching) is no longer tracking it.

But here, he's got her. York. That's a spot of familiarity. Something the Meta can maybe hang onto for a while, just as he hung onto Wash. Convenient, not comforting.

(Is it?)

He rolls his head to the side, cracks his neck. Gone for good… That sounds real fucking good right now. He's tired of being in this cell. Tired of the fog, the distance, the cold unreality that presses in on him.

York seems … not warm. More like a spark ready to ignite, to blow everything around her to smithereens. And the Meta likes fire.

So he cocks an eyebrow—you had to ask?—and strides forward, moving less like a man and more like the predator he became.

[neverknocks]

Her smile turns smug, like she's won a bet, like she's just gotten exactly what she wanted for free. Without turning, she calls back to the overgrown frat boy in the gray and orange armor.

"What'd I tell you?"

She'd be lying if she said she wasn't unnerved by the way he moves. She might've been near the top of the board back in Freelancer, but she's got no illusions of her own limits. She's pretty keenly aware of them, actually, ever since they took Delta from her.

But she lets him close in on her personal space, can tell that that's a gamble and not a familiar promise of provocation, and decides the risk is worth it. She, too, can feel herself latching onto something familiar, and she wants to see what he'll do, how else he's changed. That, and she doesn't want to look like a jackass in front of Felix. Backing away scared just because he reminds her even more of an animal than a human being now more than ever would really tank her personal image.

"I hear you're going by the Meta these days." She fixes her gaze on his face, and she leans forward just slightly, her arms crossed over her chest, wearing that familiar shit-eating grin. "Is that what I should be callin' you?"

[a_shadow]

There was a world where Tex had been so busy taking care of the men who she had taken charge of caring for, of protecting, that she hadn't been taking the time she should to clean her weapon as she should. Perhaps it had begun to slip her mind, or perhaps she hadn't considered how dusty Blood Gulch could be. Or perhaps they had kept her so busy keeping them from getting killed she simply couldn't find the time to deal with it.

In this world, however, she had remembered, and just the day before she ended up needing to seek out her old friend York, she did take the time it required to field strip her rifle, clean it, and oil it. So when they got into a firefight with Wyoming, York didn't hear her cry out that her weapon had jammed. Instead, Tex pops out from cover to shoot at Wyoming, who dives for cover himself. She moves closer to his hiding spot.

She and York had been doing a lot of calling back and forth thus far in the fight, but with Wyoming all but cornered it seems best to fall silent from speaking for now. She activates her cloaking device, moves along the wall until she gets a good view on him, and pops him in the thigh.

"Argh!" Wyoming cries, falling down.

"Gottim!" Tex exclaims.

[neverknocks]

As ever, York is glad she’s got Delta to cover her left side. Things could’ve gotten real dodgy if literally anything had gone wrong. Like someone’s weapon jamming or something. That would’ve sucked.

She hustles over to Tex’s position, still mindful of the fact that even though the biggest threat is down, that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of other hostiles. She puts Delta on it for now, standing over Wyoming’s fallen form.

“You always were a hell of a shot, Tex.”

That’s genuine appreciation right there. She’s never been one too focused on revenge, but yeah, a little payback is pretty nice. She swaps her assault rifle for her pistol, takes brief aim, and fires a shot into Wyoming’s left foot and gets a choked gurgle of pain for her trouble. Delta flickers in disapproval.

That was an unnecessary use of ammunition.

“Yeah, yeah. Just makin’ extra sure he can’t get away.”

[a_shadow]

"I know."

The response is smug, but also said with a touch of good humor; the both know she's got reasons to be so good. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, jutting her other hip.

"You two want to interrogate him, or should I?"

She smirks to herself.

"Or do you want to play 'good cop, bad cop?'"

[neverknocks]

York grins behind her visor. Funny, she never really thought she'd see either of them again — in a lot of ways, she hoped she never would — but damn if it isn't turning out to be gratifying.

"Yeah, I dunno that good cop is gonna get us anywhere with this asshole. How about bad cop, really fucking scary cop?"

This Tex's mission, anyway — York's gonna let her call the shots on how to investigate Omega's whereabouts. She's more than happy to help if it involves punching Wyoming, though.

[a_shadow]

Faced with two enemies, Wyoming is much more forthcoming than he might have been in that other reality. Tex doesn't have to threaten to beat him senseless with his own helmet and access his communication logs to discover Omega's whereabouts on her own—he stammers a bit with some bluster, and she steps toward him, and that's it. He explains that Omega has returned to Blood Gulch and implanted in the Blue leader.

"The Blue leader?" she asks. She points her rifle at his other thigh. "That still doesn't tell me who. Who the hell is in charge of them now?"

Wyoming chuckles darkly. "It doesn't matter," he says. "There's no stopping Omega's plan now."

"Oh, fuck this," she says, and, swinging her rifle end-over-end, brings it down on his helmet. Guess she's checking his logs after all.

Soon enough she taken off his helmet, though checking his logs tells her no more than what he'd been willing to reveal on his own. She tosses his helmet aside in frustration.

"Want to go to Blood Gulch with me?" she asks York.

[neverknocks]

See? York was right. Really fucking scary cop wins out in the end. Kind of nostalgic to watch her beat up Wyoming, though.

“Blood Gulch? You wanna drag me to a sim base now?” York’s equal parts surprised and skeptical. “The hell is Omega doing implanting in sim soldiers?”

for gregor

[neverknocks]

Generally speaking, York doesn't like working for the Cetagandans. They pay good money, but they're so inflexible. Real all-or-nothing clients, and not the kind you want to piss off. That goes double for anything relating to Barrayar, because both empires go absolutely apeshit over each other. But sometimes you're in a dry spell and really low on fuel and this is the only contract you can get that'll pay enough to get you out of this fucking hub and back on your way to a planet with a nice beach or something.

Also, it pays really well.

Timing is just her luck; the opportunity's only arisen because a political delegation just happens to be taking place on Aslund Station this week, and the right people with the right information just happen to be in attendance. The job itself is relatively simple: nick a data disk off some unsuspecting ImpSec courier, crack the encryption, and upload it to its destination via secure comconsole. Baby tier. She could do this shit in her sleep.

They've got the wrong kind of officers carrying this data; she lifts the data disk off the courier on her first pass, saving her the trouble of needing to find a natural entry into the council room. After that it's a quick trip through the ventilation system to a security room by the docking bay (Delta tells her that she could have moved just as efficiently by civilian channels given the crowd density, but he clearly hasn't incorporated the cool factor into his tactical matrix) and about ninety seconds of close combat before the two Aslund security guards are out cold on the floor. And then she gets to work.

"How're we doing on that encryption, D?"

Delta's small green hologram flickers into view at her shoulder while she's getting the transfer queued up. T minus sixty seconds until decryption is complete.

"Any chance we can speed that up a little?"

Negative. I am diverting some of my processing power to looping the security feeds.

"Well, shit, I can do that manually. Patch me in and get that data cracked, D."

Delta is silent. He does not patch her in. York stares at his hologram.

"Oh my god, you don't think I can do it."

I think a more advantageous use of your energy would be to deal with the incoming threat. Private security forces will be here within fifteen seconds.

"Hey, I thought we got in undetected — wait, private security? Whose?"

Unclear. T minus forty seconds until decryption is complete.

"Oh, you've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

'Private security' is a nice euphemism for armed thugs — one of those assholes is wielding a plasma rifle in closed quarters on a fucking space station. Fortunately, the small security office is to her advantage in close combat, and by the time she's done with them, Delta's done with the decryption. But there are more coming, he warns — no time to complete the upload.

Well, shit. York scrambles the connection and clears the system cache before she bails with the data disk, this time opting for civilian channels to get to her ship. Shit, shit, shit. She's gonna have to find some other secure comconsole to upload this thing onto, and she doesn't even know who the hell is chasing her or why.

They don't seem prepared to chase her out into space, though, and it's almost a clean getaway. Would've been cleaner if she'd been able to actually finish the job. As it is, she strips off her combat armor once she's in the bridge, which makes up most of the otherwise very modest jump ship, and tosses it in a pile, shaking out sweat-matted hair. She drops into the pilot seat and brings up the nav console, charting a new course. There are three other space stations in this hub she can hit — she can still get the job done. She'd better, or the Cetas'll make sure she never leaves this hub.

A little nap sounds in order once she's set a course for Vervain Station, but before she can really finish the thought, Delta's voice chimes in her mind only:

York, someone has stowed aboard this ship.

She jerks back up. Somebody's what now?

I detect two human life forms aboard this ship. Someone must have boarded during our operation.

Well, shit, guess I gotta stop leaving the keys in the ignition.

Silently, York gets to her feet and picks up her stunner, double checking the setting before taking a careful scan of the room. The ship's small, and there are only so many places to hide. In a loud, purposeful voice, she says, "Gee, sure is nice to be back aboard my personal ship where I live. Now that I'm totally and completely alone, I think I'll take that huge shit I've been holding in all day."

[lets_see_what_happens]

Gregor’s heart is still pounding when he hears a loud announcement about taking a shit and manages not to curse out loud. He’s cleaned his bleeding head up as best he could in the tiny space, but he’s still kind of a mess after somehow evading his team of kidnappers. It had only taken a second to register that he hadn’t recognized a single face in his security detail—they had clearly been banking on him buying it longer because they were shocked when he bolted, but they did also immediately fire after him, which confirmed his suspicions quite nicely.

He hadn’t had time to be smug about it as he careened through the back corridors of the station, even if he was clearly faster than they expected, too. He’d only tripped once when a stunner blast had clipped his heel, which is how he hit his head, but at least he hadn’t been hit by the idiot with the plasma rifle. Stunned and limping, he had managed to get into a garage and, miraculously, found an unlocked ship to slip into. He hid himself as best he could and listened to the whole group of them stomp past before he relaxed for a second and tried to rub feeling back into his leg. Less than a minute later he felt the ship powering up around him, which was… a different problem.

With which he is faced right now. He clears his throat loudly, so as not to startle his mysterious benefactor outside, and opens his mouth.

“Hello,” he says politely, resisting the urge to cover his face with his hands. But what else can he do? “Unfortunately your restroom is occupied at the moment. I only meant to borrow your space for a few minutes, and I definitely didn’t still mean to be here when you took off. If I open the door could you please do me the courtesy of not shooting me? I’d very much appreciate it.”

[neverknocks]

York sighs a little. It's not that she doesn't trust Delta — it just would've been nice if he'd been wrong for once. Now she has an unfinished job and a headache.

"Yeah, alright. You come out slowly, one limb at a time, Twister-style, and I probably won't shoot you." She's not going to lie to the guy; you never know. Sometimes it's just easier to deal with these kinds of situations when the other party is unconscious. "I've got a stunner and a pretty mean left hook, so don't go tryin' anything cute."

She's lying about one thing, anyway: it's her right hook you've gotta watch out for.

[lets_see_what_happens]

“I’ll take it,” Gregor says dryly, and unlocks the door. He does move very slowly, coming out hands first as he unfolds his long, lanky frame into the main cabin.

“I’m Greg,” he offers. “I was being followed and I hid in your ship to shake them off. I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

[neverknocks]

Damn, this guy is tall. It's actually kind of impressive that he managed to fold himself in there. One of York's eyebrows lifts as he rises to his full height, though her stunner aim doesn't waver.

"Greg," she repeats, as though she suspects he's just given her a fake name. Well, whatever. She's not really a turn-you-into-the-authorities kind of person. She just doesn't want this to be her problem anymore. "Who's followin' you?"

From inside the confines of her mind, she hears Delta's voice. York, I believe the mercenaries we encountered in the surveillance room may have been after this man.

Yeah, yeah, I figured that might be the case. I wanna see what he thinks I wanna hear, though.

[lets_see_what_happens]

“I confess, I’m not entirely sure. I just know they were armed and shot at me. One of them had a plasma rifle, which was so stupid of them the detail stuck in my mind.”

Gregor spreads his hands helplessly.

“I’m aware you have no reason to believe me, but I also… can’t go back to the station just now, in case they’re still looking for me. I don’t suppose you have an alternative destination where you could drop me…?”

for carolina

[neverknocks]

Things have been better for York. The firefight with Wyoming had been a shit turn of luck, and then Wash took her AI implant and healing unit and left her for dead. How could he have missed her vital signs? Or did he leave her there on purpose, knowing she was dead weight in her condition? When she heard later about Maine going off the deep end and hunting down Freelancers, she wonders if she might have dodged a bullet, but it's been months now and that injury never healed quite right, and neither had her mind closed around the ragged hole where Delta had been. It's like going half-blind all over again, only this time the damage is invisible, untreatable, and even after the nightmares stop, the vague sense of unreality persists, casting a strange halo around all her sensory input. 

She knows they're after her. Maybe Wash had left her there because he'd been counting on Command to clean up after them. Recovery seems quite keen on tying up all their loose ends, and she knows the only way she wins this game in the end is if she comes out real far ahead. But they're catching up to her, she' s sure. She's slowing down, has been slowed down — it's just hard without Delta. Not just the security hacking, not just the coverage on her left side. She'd managed all that on her own once upon a time. But keeping her thoughts straight — at what point had she gotten so used to him organizing her thoughts, sorting data, keeping her sharper? He was always there when she reached for him, and she keeps on reaching for him. And he's not there even though it feels like he should be, some bullshit phantom limb phenomenon only it's inside her brain and it's quiet, way too quiet — she never knew there was such a thing as too quiet to sleep.

She had to give up her search for Carolina, too. She can't do it without Delta, and she definitely can't do it while she's on the run. And it's just bad fucking luck that she's washed up here, of all places. The only thing Wash left on her was that lighter, and it's about the last thing she's got left to hold onto, and some nights she just lays awake, staring at the ceiling and flicking the lighter back and forth in her hand, trying to remember all the data she and Delta had scrounged together on Carolina's whereabouts.

York just needs to get enough cash to get herself offworld. She's been stuck here too long, losing time as she loses out on the well-paying jobs, and now she really is down to petty theft — just straight up stripping copper wires. Someone's paying her to do it, sure, but this, she thinks as she jams herself into a sweaty little blind spot from the security cams with a penlight between her teeth, is pretty much professional rock bottom.

The floor she's on is currently closed for construction, distinctly un-air-conditioned, and with embarrassingly thin security — corporate offices not really that worried about hard-up infiltrations specialists breaking into their electrical systems, apparently, which is just as well. She can't do cool shit like remotely disabling surveillance systems anymore, so she'll just have to extract as much as she can from the massive hole in the drywall in the corner here. She's a few stories up from Club Errera, but she can still feel the faint pulse of the music, and it takes effort not to let it scatter her thoughts into kaleidoscope.

"Think I can probably knock this hole open a little more and reach another bundle from this spot," she mutters to herself, flashing the penlight into the exposed wall. "Don't think we need to worry about sound, those cams look video-only — what d'you think, D?"

She still talks to Delta sometimes even though she knows he's not really there. She kept trying to catch herself every time she did it, but she doesn't really bother anymore. Better to try to remember what it felt like to have him there than just feel his absence. Settled on an answer from the silence, she uses the front end of her wire stripper to bash apart the drywall and get easier access to those sweet, sweet copper wires.

[youfallback]

It's been a long time since Carolina had her short-lived AI ripped from her skull and thrown off a cliff. However, her anger and desire for revenge for everything and everyone involved still burns hotter than ever. It simmers constantly beneath her skin as she moves from place to place, dodging the attention of Freelancer by one miracle after another. The first miracle was her survival in the first place. A shot with a grappling gun slowed her descent to survivable and even with broken bones, she knew she couldn't stay still.

Her armor is never stored far from her as she treks from place to place, following an invisible line set by fate as slums it up in some of the worst conditions. There are bodyguard gigs here and there, but they require hair dye and contacts to cover up the girl on the wanted bulletins. What wrong did she commit beyond surviving one betrayal after another? Only the gods know.

The nightmares never settle, never ease, and Carolina is left with more holes in her memory as the years pile on. Half-awake and half-dead more days than not. She's exhausted, she needs rest, and part of her is tempted to join some distant platoon as a regular enlisted if just to find some space for herself in the universe.

It's the night she's made that decision: to ditch her armor and enlist under false identification, lie her way through the psych eval, and come out a new woman: McAlister. She'd get shipped off to some backwater nowhere and maybe she could find some semblance of peace. However, she finds herself wanting to store her armor somewhere familiar, somewhere that secretly started it all.

She only has enough in her pocket for tonight's hotel and a few drinks to try and drown the darkness in her head. As she goes to use the facilities, though, she passes the security office. Her head pops up at the sight of someone on one of the screens. Someone that reminds her of another ghost from her past, someone who should be long dead according to official records. But then again, who isn't?

Despite not carrying, Carolina has little doubt of her abilities. She's been kicking ass since her back healed wrong and she doubts a little invader is going to cause her much trouble. She takes the stairs, two at a time, and picks up a piece of crown moulding on her way down to hall toward the figure. She keeps low, her footsteps in her boots near silent as she approaches.

She hears the familiar voice and her heart sinks. There's still time to back out of his, to not touch this particular ghost, but she's engaged now. Her dark hair is pulled up and away from her face, the brown contacts obscuring her bright green eyes, but she has no doubt she'll be recognized if she lets any of the cameras capture her face. So she tugs up the hood on her jacket before continuing down the hall.

As she steps up behind the figure, she presses the piece of moulding to the back of the woman's head.

"Stand up and step away," Carolina orders, her mind silently begging for this to be someone, anyone, else.

[neverknocks]

Son of a bitch.

Had she accidentally moved into the range of the security cams? And had someone really gotten the drop on her in an open construction site full of scattered drywall and heavy plastic sheeting? Jesus, this is embarrassing. If there's a sure sign that she's slipping, this is it.

The voice triggers a sense memory, vivid enough to punch right through her brain for a moment — but her memory misfires all the time these days, and it just keeps getting worse. And if she couldn't find Carolina in all those years of searching, it's absurd to think York might find her here of all places.

She has a pistol in a thigh holster, but she can't reach it — not before this lady brains her in the back of the head, and she doesn't really like leaving bodies behind anyway, dead or otherwise. What an awkward-ass angle to be caught in. Well, this job's a bust. All she needs to do is get the fuck out and, shit, go back to stealing credit cards or something. She was wrong before — this is rock bottom.

"Sorry about that, officer," she says, although she highly doubts this person is actually a security officer. York doesn't actually care what this lady is as long as she can get out of here clean. "I'm on the day crew and I just forgot some of my tools, so, I, uh..."

It's not the least bit convincing, but that's fine because as York starts to rise, slowly, she suddenly sweeps her leg out behind her, hoping to knock the other person off her feet, or at least off her guard. Bad eye aside, losing Delta hadn't impacted her hand-to-hand combat ability quite so badly, and once upon a time she'd been pretty fucking good.

[youfallback]

Carolina's breath catches in her throat as she hears a too-familiar voice. She hears the cadence of the other woman's voice, the way she lies so smoothly. It's distracting Carolina, even though part of her knew this could be happening. It should be impossible to hear that voice in the first place but here they are.

The woman in front of her starts to stand and Carolina reads the kick before it happens and handsprings back, just barely missing a pile of drywall. She's about to hit the lights, but her desire to know just who is in front of her stops her at the last moment. Instead she stares back at the other woman, waiting for her to turn around.

[neverknocks]

Ah, hell. Now York's actually got a fight on her hands. She was hoping to knock the other woman off her guard just enough to get a head start, but it's too late to book it now — she'll definitely be followed, and she can't afford anyone finding out about her special armor hiding place.

She stupidly wastes half a second on reflex, because this is the part where Delta sorts through probability scenarios and tells her what her best option is. And now she's really short on time and she can tell by the sound that the other woman's out of arm's reach, so she settles on what she thinks is probably her best option: the wire stripper still in her hand. 

York turns and throws the wire stripper in the direction of the sound of other woman's landing. It's already out of her hand by before she can register a familiar face behind the dyed hair and color contacts.

Fortunately for Carolina, York's aim isn't so great these days.

for wash (chorus au)

[neverknocks]

She's never been one to turn down a good opportunity, and she knows one when she sees one. So when the overgrown fuckboy calling himself a mercenary takes over the transport ship delivering her to some new maximum security facility, she takes her chances. There really isn't anywhere to go from here but up.

Felix is skeptical at first — the fucking Counselor had gotten to him first, told him all about her and Wash and Carolina and how she'd suffered from an acute case of ejection trauma, how losing an AI who's been integrated into your mind for years can destabilize a person's psyche, how she'd suffered an injury that left her at a disadvantage on the field. She's not crazy, and she's learned how to cover her left side a lot better since then, at least when trading blows in the prison yard.

Felix isn't really worried about crazy, though. Crazy's a given. He just wants to make sure she's not going to turn on them to rejoin her old Freelancer buddies. The Counselor really stacked the deck against her. Well, did Mr. Price Is Right mention the fact that she'd spent years looking for Carolina, unsure as to whether or not she was even alive, but Carolina had never come looking for her? Or the fact that Wash had been the one to take Delta from her while she was on death's door and left her to be collected by the people she'd spent years running from? Or even that thanks to Wash, all the AI units in Project Freelancer had been completely wiped from existence, including Delta? Anger's never really been her thing, but she's pissed — pissed that they're both alive and well, that they both must've known she was still alive and discarded her along with the rest of their past with Project Freelancer anyway.

She'd never have signed up for an op as ruthless as this one in the old days, but she doesn't exactly have the luxury of choice. She wants revenge, payout, and retirement, in that order, and if killing a couple of old comrades is all that stands before her and freedom — well, she's pretty sure she can live with that.

She goes by Fox now. She's got a new suit of armor courtesy of the mercs, outfitted with one of their modified healing units. It's not quite the same as her old one, but she still knows how to work it a hell of a lot better than most of these assholes. She still favors the bronze of her Freelancer armor — some old habits just die hard — but the silver accents have been replaced with detailing in green. And, okay, yeah, she still favors the same assault rifle, but it's the first gun she's had in her hands in years and it feels a hell of a lot better than she expected it to.

Wash still favors his old colors, too, it seems. It's not hard to pick him out of the crowd in Chorus's quaint little resistance army, and though he's changed, the way he moves is still familiar. Standing on a precipice overlooking the firefight, she takes aim with her rifle, and fires a shot to kill.

for wash (recovery one au)

[neverknocks]

York hears, distantly, Delta telling Tex she won't survive, and the last thing she thinks before she blacks out is I got taken out by Wyoming?

Jesus, what an embarrassing way to go out. 

Except she's not so dead after all, apparently, because she becomes keenly aware of the pain again after some indeterminate dreamless period. Her chest feels like it's on fire, and every muscle in her body feels stiff and cramped. If the afterlife is supposed to hurt like a sonofabitch then she thinks she might have taken a few wrong moral turns in life. Hm. 

But no, Delta had somehow managed to make the most of what they had, running the healing unit just enough to keep her alive, stretching out a power supply to last several times longer than it should have. It's goddamn robot Chanukah and nobody told her, York thinks blearily as her mind gropes for consciousness. She can feel the background hum of Delta's presence, though the rest of her is still feeling pretty murky.

By the time Wash arrives on the scene, she's still coming to with a groan.