RvB Mini-Fic Collection

I haven't written in a while, so I'm going to try something new – a mini-fic collection of sorts. Just short little snippets that are written straight off the top of my head and not planned in advance or overly edited after writing. I recently came across a list of challenge words for just this purpose, and, of course, my head went to "I finally have a way to do RvB fanfic!" For the most part, I tried to focus on the main ten characters I tend to use for memes. Some got a lot of use, some were ignored because I didn't have anything. Whoops. There's also some focus on the soldiers and AIs of Project Freelancer. I tried not to put TOO much focus on Church/Tex, since being an in-general ship geek isn't exactly fitting in Red vs. Blue fandom (except for the slash community, I guess, but I have zero involvement there!), but I can guarantee you, Church/Tex WILL happen at least once in these things, so if you don't like them, best be off now. Go on, shoo. Sorry, it's just that some of these challenge words leave me with no choice and it's not like I'm ADVERSE to the idea. XD Now let's try this out... these are in the order of the list I found, but not necessarily the order I wrote them in. And some challenge words got scrapped because I didn't have any ideas for them. Not even terrible ideas, just... nothing. For commentary on each individual piece, see the user comments at the very bottom.

SPOILERS AHOY, MATEY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Love</i></u>
I loved her.
She was violent, she was greedy, she had admitted issues with commitment, but God damn it I loved her. Maybe she was cruel to most, but it was a bit more subdued when it was directed at me. More light sarcasm than out-and-out hostility. And when she WAS hostile, well, let's face it, I deserved it.
And she told me she loved me, too. And that of all the guys she'd dated before, I was the first person to make her want to use That Word. Every time we got into an argument about her cheating when things looked bad instead of talking to me about it, it always came back to that. No matter how many guys she'd dated or kissed or... did the unthinkable with... she only used the word "love" when on dates with ME or after kissing ME or while WE were...
Our relationship was completely unhealthy, neither of us treated the other as well as we could, but it was ours. No matter what I said or did, I was in love with her the whole time, and it never stopped, not even after she broke up with me and sneaked out in the middle of the night to join the military, just as she'd planned on doing since she was a child. I never stopped loving her, worrying about her, missing her.
And I would do ANYTHING to have her back.

Hate</i></u>
Hate was never an emotion that Medical Officer DuFresne – or Doc, as the Gulch's soldiers had named him – thought about very much. It was a waste of energy to him to focus on the bad things about people or situations. It was best to concentrate on the good. He wasn't even sure what it felt like to hate someone.
Until O'Malley took control of his body and mind, leaving him a passenger in his own head. O'Malley, a being of pure rage and hatred. Doc was now filled with far too many thoughts and emotions that he'd spent all his life avoiding. The AI had taken over the medic's good, forgiving nature for the worse. To put it bluntly, O'Malley hated everything.
And if he had to, Doc would fully admit that he hated O'Malley.

Rose</i></u>
"So what made you choose this one, Allison?"
Leonard Church sat with his girlfriend, examining the tattoos on her exposed back. A large, white star took up most of the space, with other, smaller designs filling in the gaps.
"Care to be a bit more specific?" she snarked, a little unseen smile on her face. "I can't see back there, dumbass."
"This little one, right under the star," he clarified. "I think it's a flower. I can't really tell."
"It's a rose," Allison said. "I thought the meaning behind that was one of the more obvious ones. You're the one who's always pulling out the 'beautiful yet dangerous' thing on me."
"It's true," Leonard said, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. "And I don't have a problem with that at all. But if it's a rose, then why's it yellow?"
"I dunno," she said, laughing shortly afterward. "It's not a color of rose you see often. Guess I was just feeling different when I got that one. Not like me to go for the usual things anyway..."

Ring</i></u>
Church sat in his bunk in Blue Base, scowling at the small jewelery box he held between his fingers. Why did he even keep the stupid thing? He had so many opportunities to get rid of it and no reason to hang on to it, but instead he'd carted it to a different freaking galaxy, stuffed it in his bedside drawer, and now spent his more insomnia-plagued nights staring at it, like if he concentrated hard enough, he could change the past.
Like he could make it so that when he presented it to Tex all those years ago, she would have said yes and married him. Like he could change her response that no, she couldn't commit to getting married, and was in fact considering joining the military and leaving the planet.
If she'd just said yes, neither of them would have even been out in that stupid canyon. His life was completely ruined by a single stupid one-syllable word.
He threw the box at the wall, causing it to snap open and deposit the small, simple ring onto the floor. He'd go get it and put it away in the morning. And the next night, he'd do all this crap all over again.
"Jesus, I'm pathetic."

Blue</i></u>
The brain damaged soldier who's killed more teammates than enemies and has trouble deciding who likes him and who would sooner see him dead.
The woman-obsessed pervert who's always too busy turning everything into a sexual innuendo to get any work done.
The girl who puts up with that pervert – hell, ENCOURAGES him – and who doesn't know when to stop talking about her seriously disturbed life back on Earth.
And the complete egotistical jerk who claims he's their leader despite only being ranked Private and who can't even shoot point blank, but constantly insists on blaming his weapon.
Caboose, Tucker, Sister, and Church. Tex shook her head as she watched the dysfunctional team that she had been spending her time helping. Connection to Church aside, how did she end up stuck with Blue Team? And despite how totally screwed up they all were, why did she feel a need to protect them from their own stupidity beyond a devotion to her job?

Emotion</i></u>
Anger. He had to get rid of the anger. It was threatening to take over completely, and who knows what would have happened if he allowed it to? It was best to segregate that. He would have just loved to let it take control, to destroy the person who was putting him under this stress... but what if that made it worse? Wasn't worth the risk... right now, the focus wasn't revenge, it was survival.
The sadness, too. The hopelessness. Whoever was showing him these horrible images, they knew just how to tear him apart. They knew the lowest points of his life and kept delivering reminders, over and over again... he couldn't take being that low again. The sadness had to go.
Fear. He'd usually never admit it, but fear was a part of him as well. Normally his pride would stop the fear from coming to the front, but that got split off a while ago. Now fear was the emotion taking hold... what was even happening to him? He couldn't understand... probably because he'd already split off his sense of logic... all he knew was that he had to get rid of the fear.
And the happiness? Dead weight. That was something that was never going to come into play ever again. After all this... he needed something that would help him to make it through this. Happiness was just taking up space and reminding him what'd he never again have. So away that went.
No matter what emotion Alpha fled to, it was always the same. It just caused him pain, whether it was because it was a painful emotion or because he realized it was one he just couldn't feel anymore. It all had to go. He had to survive this somehow, and if becoming a stoic shell would get him out of the suffering, then so be it.

Cold</i></u>
"Man, it's fucking cold."
"I hope we get some action."
Life was slow for the Blues of Sidewinder. The outpost's Reds never did much; just stood around and talked, really. Not that it was any different for the Blues. Right now, Private Jimmy was in the middle of telling the rest of his squad about his girlfriend back home. It was boring enough for him to actually be having this conversation instead of preparing to fight the Reds. Other than the occasional one-on-one skirmish, no fights ever really happened. Certainly no team-on-team wars.
Private Mickey always wished for something to do beyond complaining about just how cold it was. He wished for something interesting, something exciting to come to the outpost.
Of course, he regretted this wish once the Freelancer showed up.

Sky</i></u>
Grif sat behind a rock, staring up at the sky. Blood Gulch was freaking hot, as it always was, the sun beating down from as high as it could be.
Come to think of it, Grif realized that it was ALWAYS beating down from as high as it could be. The sun never moved. Neither did the clouds. The sky was always perfectly stationary. The weather never changed, either – not the slightest drop or rise of temperature, no precipitation, no wind, nothing. He'd been stationed at that outpost for, what, four years? The only reason he could really keep track of how long he'd been out there was by using the calendar built into his helmet's visor. It'd been so long that he had forgotten what the night sky looked like. It just didn't exist anymore. Everything about the canyon's climate was perfectly still and unchanging. Only way he could be sure of the passage of time aside from noticing that his calendar had changed was by bugging Simmons about it, since he never did feel like figuring out how to set his own visor's clock. The lack of visible change was seriously getting to Grif. Especially since it made him actually have to ask SIMMONS for things.
Stupid unchanging sky.
Grif took a drag from the cigarette he was smoking before removing it from his lips and depositing the ashes into the dirt, groaning as he did so."Man, this place sucks."

Beach</i></u>
"Come ON, Caboose!" Church snapped. "We have to GO!"
"But... but Church! The crabs!" Caboose whined, crouching in the sand on Zanzibar as he poked at a crab with a stick he'd found. "I want to play with the crabs!"
"Like I care about a bunch of stupid shellfish," Church said. "I don't even know how the hell I let myself get dragged to this beach. Either way, we're LEAVING. Now come the hell on!"
Caboose made another whining noise that Church paid no attention to. Defeated, he dropped the stick and rejoined his 'commander'.
"Wait, Church? Before we go, I need to use the bathroom."
"But you just went five minutes – oh, never mind. Go ahead." Church waved Caboose away before promptly finding a tree to bash his helmeted head against.

Stars</i></u>
Franklin Donut had always admired the stars of Hollywood. Their perfect looks, their perfect talents, their perfect lives, their fame and their fortune... he'd been following every trashy celebrity tabloid practically since he'd learned to read. He always wondered what it'd be like to be one of them. But he couldn't sing, couldn't dance, couldn't act...
...but maybe he could learn to handle a gun? That's what led him to this army, bright-eyed and eager. Maybe being a war hero wouldn't be as glamorous as being a top model, but it'd be something. And he DID have an admitted thing for military men, which would make the army life that much better.
He wanted to be a star of Hollywood, leading him among the literal stars of space.

Fight</i></u>
Sarge and Grif were always at each other's throats. Grif may have deserved it most of the time for his lazy attitude and constant insubordination, but you couldn't deny that he had a point when he protested the fact that most of Sarge's plans involved his corpse.
Grif and Simmons weren't much better. Simmons couldn't understand why Grif didn't respect their commander; Grif wondered why Simmons DID respect Sarge. Simmons couldn't take Grif's slovenly behavior, his habits of leaving his filthy socks all over the base and sleeping about eighteen hours a day and insisting on drinking the milk out of the carton because he's too damn lazy to wash a cup; and if Grif had to hear Simmons quoting the Red Army Handbook in Swedish one more time simply to prove he could, the barrel of his gun was going directly into his own mouth. At least it'd get him out of this pointless war.
Church was yelling at Caboose yet again. He was probably trying to help, and in the process ended up setting something on fire again. Or maybe Church was just tired of pulling his head out of the freezer "because the ice cream tastes better when you leave it in there and just eat it with your face". Or most likely, he was in a foul mood for no particular reason and Caboose was the first person he saw.
Whatever the case, Caboose was no longer in his normally cheerful mood, either. And now Tucker and Sister were in hearing range, talking about things Caboose didn't understand. He figured he should go let them know that they were stupid because they were talking about things that didn't make sense. And they wouldn't even let him know what they were talking about, either! Just told him it was stuff for the "big people" and it'd never matter to him anyway, especially not if he kept on going with his ridiculous crush on the tank! How DARE they mock his Sheila!
For two armies who were meant to be fighting each other, the Red and Blue Teams spent a lot more time bickering amongst themselves.

Book</i></u>
"So, Church? Weren't we going to read a book together?" Caboose asked, hovering over Church's shoulder.
"What are you talking about?" Church asked.
"When we were outside and I was confused about the Tucker's baby thing, you said you would read me a book so that I would not be confused anymore."
"...right. Right, I did promise that, didn't I." Church held his head in his hands, already starting to regret this idea. "Well, to start... when a guy and a girl like each other-"
"Does that mean I need to stop talking to Sheila?" Caboose, asked, worried. "Because I like to talk to Sheila. But I will stop if talking to Sheila would make me catch the pregnancy."
"I said a guy and a girl, not a guy and a tank!" Church snapped, seriously unwilling to think about Caboose's disturbing crush on the tank any longer than necessary. "Anyway, when a guy and a girl like-"
"But wait! I thought girls did not like Tucker!" Caboose interrupted again. "I don't think anybody should like Tucker. And that includes girls."
"Damn it, Caboose, would you let me finish?! You're the one who wanted me to explain! What I'm TRYING to tell you is that girls get pregnant after-"
"But Tucker is not a girl!" Caboose once again had to comment. "And Tucker is the one who has the pregnancy! I want to know how TUCKER got the pregnancy and how I can NOT get it!"
"You know what, Caboose?! I give up!" Church stood and walked over to a bookshelf. He pulled two books down – one about alien biology and one about the facts of life that seemed aimed at teenagers just hitting puberty – and handed them over to Caboose. "Doc left these here. Just read them in your spare time, OK? And if you can't figure it out, don't come asking me about it! I am NOT having this conversation with you!"
"But Church!" Caboose said. "Church, how can I read the alien book? It does not have pictures!"
"THIS ISN'T MY PROBLEM, CABOOSE!"

Angel</i></u>
Angels don't exist. It's best to get that thought out of your mind right now. You're never going to find some gorgeous girl who's sweet as honey and will do everything you've ever dreamed of.
And even if they DO exist, I'm sure as hell not one of them. I'm about as unfeminine as they come – I hate make-up, I hate skirts, and I like spending my weekends down at the shooting range rather than in a shopping mall. And sweet as honey? Who are you kidding? Quite frankly, I despise  people. Very few of them have managed to avoid invoking my ire, and there's even less that I can actually say I like.
Yet Leonard calls me his angel anyway. He tells me I'm beautiful, even though I don't exactly try to make myself that way. He puts up with my moods – sometimes, at least, which is still more effort than most people make. He forgives my mistakes, which he should, since he makes as many as I do. He's one of very few guys who's actually treated me decently and has made it perfectly clear that he loves me. And he's the only one I've ever truly loved back.
Maybe I'm not an angel by any sense of the term, but if that's what Leonard Church wants to call me on our calmer nights, I'll give him at least that much.

Holiday</i></u>
"Merry Christmas, Church!" Caboose chirped happily, holding an oddly-shaped, poorly wrapped present out in front of his 'superior'. "I got you something! I ordered it all the way from Earth!"
"Christmas?" Church asked. "Caboose, it's MARCH."
"It takes a while for things to get here from Earth," Caboose said simply. "Now open your present!"
Knowing that the rookie wouldn't leave him alone, Church tore into the present with very little enthusiasm.
"Oh. A singing fish," he said dully upon resting his eyes on the gift.
"Press the button!" Caboose urged him. Church did so; the fish sprung to life and began wailing the chorus to "I Will Survive."
"Wow. It's great. Thanks so God damn much," Church said, the sarcasm sailing completely over Caboose's head.
"And now I have go give Tex hers!" Caboose said. "And Sister's, too! But not Tucker. Tucker doesn't get one because he is stupid and he smells like feet." The second Caboose was gone, Church went to put his newly-obtained fish with the other twenty Caboose insisted on giving him for every holiday, birthday, and "I'm buying you a random gift because you are my bestest friend" occasion.

Snow</i></u>
Dexter Grif sat on a bench at the edge of the frozen pond with his little sister, Kaikaina. The thirteen-year-old girl was shivering and had several large blankets wrapped around her and a foam cup of hot chocolate in her trembling hands. Dex also had a cup, twice the size of his sister's.
"How'd you do it, Kai?" Dexter asked, the worry not yet out of his voice.
"Do what?" Kai asked for clarification, apparently unaware about the panic her family had been placed under.
"How'd you survive that? You were under the ice for HOURS. I was so sure you weren't going to make it..." Dex bit his lower lip as he considered the fact that he'd almost lost his sister. Maybe they didn't always get along, but he still cared about her. After all, he'd practically raised her since she was young. Their parents sure didn't seem up for the task.
"I dunno. I just fell through the ice, felt cold for a few seconds, blacked out, and the next thing I knew I was in an ambulance," Kai said with a shrug. "They ran a few tests, decided I'd be fine with warmth and bed rest, and discharged me. That was it."
Dex nodded. "Well, however it happened... I'm just glad you're all right." He swung his feet above the ground, sending lumps of snow flying.
"Hey... Dex?" Kai said after a period of silence. "I should probably tell you the results of one of the tests, but you can't tell mom about it."
"What is it that I can't tell mom?" he asked, sipping the chocolate from his cup.
"Well, according to the tests, even though the cold should have put the baby at risk, it'll probably be fine."
Dexter sputtered, spraying the chocolate in his mouth all over the snow. "Wait, what baby?!"
"But it's OK. I'm probably gonna get an abortion anyway. I can do that without getting permission or anything. I've done it before."
Dexter stared utterly slack-jawed at his young sister, unable to believe the words that were leaving her mouth or the off-hand tone she was using to say them. "Done it BEFORE?! Wait, WHAT?! KAIKAINA!"

Memory</i></u>
Every thought caused Washington to flinch. He couldn't tell anymore... which memories belonged to him and which to the Director? Who was he anymore? David, he thought... that was his name, right? He thought it was. Even without the memories from Epsilon clouding his mind, he still had trouble recalling his true name. A lot of the Freelancers did, even the ones without AIs. Their code names had become such a part of their identity. His name was Washington now. David died the second he joined the Freelancers.
But at least then it was just the name that died. After being assigned as Epsilon's host, everything about his identity had gone. OK, that wasn't exact – his memories were intact – but they were so mixed with the Director's that he couldn't tell where they were. They may as well have not been there.
He was assured after Epsilon's removal that the effects would soon pass and he'd have his own thoughts back. He could only pray that it was true. He would also fight to the death to make sure he never had to host another AI ever again.

Sin</i></u>
It was a sin, what he did during Project Freelancer. That's what the Chairman had said. It was unforgivable to torture the Alpha AI to a breaking point simply to use the pieces to ruin the minds of his soldiers. Even if the fragments were completely stable and could be hosted reliably... doing things like placing two AIs in one solider? Making teams involving one implanted Freelancer and one not, leading to predictable results due to jealousy from the soldiers who didn't know the hell of having an unstable AI fragment in their head and just saw the power? What was he thinking?
But the Director ignored all of these admonishments from the Chairman. He did what had to be done, and even amongst the failures, he still managed to create some effective soldier-AI teams. For every failure like Washington and North Carolina, there were ones like Texas and New York who brought humanity that much closer to winning the war against the aliens.
Maybe a few lives were destroyed, both human and AI, but for the sake of humanity at large, the Director considered his sins to be worth it.