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vagrantblvrd · 4 years

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I’m like. @miss-ingno had the gall to plant an idea in my head regarding the androids in ~space AU, and then this? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jeremy’s this promising soldier from one of the outer colony worlds, right? Got caught up in the fighting when it came to his home planet and when it moved on he went with it. (It’s how things work, when you sign on with the military.)

Left his family and friends behind – those that survived the years of fighting – and did his best not to look back.

His unit got sent into a fight they didn’t stand a chance of winning and he’s one of the few who made it out (mostly) alive.

Was going to be out of things for a while thanks to his injuries, necessary physical rehab if he hoped to regain his mobility and such and was brought to a facility.

Big shiny thing smack dab in the middle of nowhere, edge of an asteroid field or something like that. Minerals and such in the floating hunks of rock out there that played merry hell with sensor readings and the whole damn thing spread out across several hubs.

Weird that it looked like you could isolate entire sections, maybe jettison them from the main assembly if there was a safety issue/breach, you know?

But it’s an old science research hub that’s been repurposed under new management, so no need to worry about that

Really.

That said, they bring him and a handful of people in similar situations there because there’s a researcher there, you see, a Doctor.

Only one, they’re told. Everything else is used as a forward base/medical facility these days since it’s so far out. (Hand on heart.)

Can work miracles and paranoid about her work and too valuable not to humor, or so they’re told. She’s come up with incredible new techniques and therapies and whatever else that might get them back on their feet faster and since the military’s put so much money into Jeremy and his fellow soldiers as it is, makes sense to try to salvage what they can if possible.

He and the others signed a contract, you see, and several years left to it and a whole lot of money down the drain if they can’t fight for them anymore, so.

It checks out as far as Jeremy’s concerned, worried about being able to send money home to his family to help them rebuild what they’ve lost until their planet recovers financially. (Won’t be like it was, but better than it is and worst case scenario enough to move somewhere better, last resort and all.)

Some nights Jeremy gets restless, wanders the facility as far as his security clearance allows him. Recreational floors and viewing stations where he gets to stare out at the asteroid field, watch the cargo shuttles and ferries and whatnot beetle about between the hubs.

Workers out on maintenance checks and minor repairs, flitting here and there. Scuttling across the surface of the hubs and connecting access ways/tubes.

Goes down to the gym and trains with one of the generic robot frames. No personality to them, just core programs and protocols and impersonal as hell.

Great for the times you know what you’re doing and just need a sparring partner or spotter or whatever, and Jeremy jokes about having a favorite, right? This older model, scratched up paint job that looks like it might have been around since the place was commissioned. (Or maybe the facility was built around it, whichever.)

Anyway, one of those nights he runs across this guy, right?

Skinny fuck running around like he knows he shouldn’t be where he is and all that, and Jeremy is like !!! because he knows there are a lot of people out there unhappy with the situation with this war(s) and the military and all that. That this used to be a top sekrit, hush hush facility where Questionable Things took place.

But then the company behind it got a new CEO and so forth and so on – there was a whole Thing about it over the news and such – and they’ve moved in a new direction since then. Been transparent about things best they can and totally on the up and up now, cross their hearts and hope to die and all that.

Still a lot of suspicious people out there, though, you know?

Lot of cargo transports and all that in and out of the facility that one of those suspicious people might be lucky enough to sneak in on. Either pretend to be someone they aren’t or manage to stow away, however the hell they want to approach things.

(Shit happens, Jeremy should know.)

So he follows this guy for a while, just in case.

Ready to call on security if he proves to be a problem but from the way the guy’s acting he doesn’t think he will be?

Just.

Sort of wandering, keeps rubbing at his neck every once in a while, but he’s wearing layers and has this hooded sweatshirt on and Jeremy figures it’s a nervous habit of some kind. Self-soothing and all.

Realizes that for all the wandering the guy’s doing he knows the facility, might be support staff or something with a guilty conscience and a bout of insomnia. (Doesn’t go near restricted areas and such. Just the lounges set aside for staff and patients and so on.)

Jeremy’s about to give it up, go back to his rooms and call it a night (whatever), but that’s when the guy notices him?

Clearly startled by the yelp and way they almost fall on their ass. (Weird gesture as he flings his hand out in warding gesture before falling on his ass, coughing and choking and hissing? but whatever. Reflexes can be weird, weird things in moments like this.)

Jeremy just stares at the guy who has this annoyed look on their face and Jeremy tries not to laugh but the whole situation is ridiculous, right?

Still, he helps the guy up and introduces himself after he apologizes for startling him.

And Gavin – because of course it’s Gavin – introduces himself right back.

Kind of annoyed still, but amusement’s slowly creeping in and they laugh about it and kind of wander around a bit. Chat about nothing because it’s like being a kid again before the war hit his home planet and he used to sneak out with his friends to run around just for the fun of it.

Gavin proves he does indeed know the facility because he lets Jeremy in on a few secrets, little ones.

Conference room where they forget to clear out the pastries and whatever other baked goods are brought in for the duration because they always think someone else will get it and then just...forget because projects and vidcalls and all sorts of things.

How to get into That One lounge with the best view of space around them without setting off alarms or anything troubling like that. The one not cluttered up with asteroids where you can see forever. (Or as far as your eyesight will let you.)

Have to detour through this one maintenance hallway to do it, though, but it’s not a security breach because the area outside this part is monitored as hell and the only way to get there undetected is from the inside, which lucky they already are and don’t worry about it, security will get ‘round to fixing that blind spot one day. (They’ve been saying that for years though, always something more pressing to see to first.)

Other little things like that that baffle Jeremy because kind of a big security risk???

Gavin shrugs, odd little smile because he’s not wrong, Jeremy, but people here are more concerned about trouble coming from the outside rather than the other way around. (Something about the way he says that, twist of bitterness to it Jeremy doesn’t really get? But it’s there and gone before he can say anything and not his business anyway, so. Yeah.)

Eventually they have to part ways – Gavin looking a little !!! about it before he runs off like he’s got a curfew or something, and Jeremy more huh about it because weird?

Doesn’t think much of it for a while.

Runs into Gavin from time to time on the nights he can’t sleep, amused at the fact Gavin’s the only one in the facility he’s met that he actually looks forward to seeing, in a weird way?

Like.

The people in charge of his rehab are nice enough, but they’re careful to keep things professional and he does the same because otherwise awkward?

The other soldiers are caught up in their own stuff and some are friendlier than others sure, they’re just not friends.

Gavin, though.

Different.

More and more so as time goes on and Jeremy notices little things about him. Frustration and this bitterness/anger simmering under his skin that he’s so, so careful to hide most of the time?

But some nights he’s too...tired to hide it.

Looks pale and drawn, tired, and the handful of times Jeremy tries to ask him about it, be a shoulder to lean on the way Gavin’s been for him Gavin deflects. (Sometimes more skillfully than others, but he always deflects.)

Will, though.

Ask random questions. Weird as hell all of them, some troubling. (Usually just bizarre though.)

And then!

Something happens.

An accident, something, and one of those hubs that can be jettisoned?

Is.

Just.

Atmosphere vented and bulkheads sealing it off and Jeremy and some of his fellow soldiers get to watch it burn/implode/explode whatever on viewing screens or through the view-port in one of the lounges.

Alarms and klaxons and voices on the speakers directing everyone to remain calm and head to designated safe areas while the staff get everything on lock-down until the emergency passes.

One of the hubs where the seriously injured soldiers are taken to recover. Quieter and all that, not as much activity to agitate them while they heal. (No visitors allowed, because reasons and Jeremy and the others are weirdly, guiltily relieved about that for reasons they can’t quite admit to themselves.)

Except Jeremy, okay.

Something is weird, he fucking knows it.

Slips past his fellow soldiers doing as they’re told and runs to that one lounge Gavin showed him how to get to that first night, right? Perfect view of what’s going on and with everyone in crisis mode they won’t notice if anyone’s down there.

Gets to see it all and realizes something is...off.

Couldn’t say what, but it’s there in the back of his head as he heads back to where he’s supposed to be afterward. Gets strange looks from the others who noticed him running off, but again, whatever.

He goes wandering later that night. Back to the lounge he’s not supposed to be able to get into and Gavin’s there.

Staring out the view port, hand at his throat and this distant look on his face. Isn’t startled to see Jeremy there when he clears his throat in an effort not to startle him too badly, but it’s obvious Gavin knows he’s there.

Gives him this little smile – wrong – and asks if Jeremy saw, earlier. (Did he?)

Flashes of light that didn’t match up from what he knows of the kind of accidents like that. (Accidents, ships under fire, one and the same from a different point of view in war sometimes.)

Other things that got snagged on the way out of being dismissed at seeing just another tragedy out in the black, cost of going where they don’t belong because humanity as a whole is so goddamned stupid about that, aren’t they?

See something like the vast endlessness of space and think, challenge accepted, and watch us, and never give up because they’re so fucking curious and wild and reckless with it.

Gavin sighs when Jeremy doesn’t give him the answers he’s looking for – doesn’t know what those would be, but Jeremy’s still working through what he saw himself.

Gavin shrugs and changes the subject and it’s awkward and strange and something shifts that night Jeremy doesn’t realize at first.

He doesn’t see Gavin too much after that, and times he does Gavin’s always tired.

Out of it, and sometimes there are bruises, burns. Bandages. Gavin waves it off, tells Jeremy it’s just.

It’s the way things are – work, maybe? - and Jeremy’s too wary of annoying the only one here worth talking to into shutting him out to push too hard.

And then, and then.

Gavin stops showing up altogether.

Leaves this little hidden message for Jeremy he finds a few weeks too late.

Gavin telling him he’s being transferred or something, got a job to do and it was great to meet you. Take care of yourself and watch your back when they send you out to fight again because Jeremy’s improved in leaps and bounds, hasn’t he?

Good as new, or nearly there and ready to go back out and fight a war he doesn’t believe in any more than he did when he signed up but back then it was to protect his home, his loved ones, and now -

Well.

Now.

Jeremy stashes Gavin’s message away in his belongings and makes sure to bring it with him when he gets shipped out not too long afterwards.

Fights in battles across God knows how many planets for a while there, scrapes through somehow and barely notices when the fighting hollows him out bit by bit. Pares him down to the soldier they’ve made him into, killing machine and look at him go, would you?

Gun in his hands and armor on his back and indistinguishable from the men and women fighting at his side, on and on, look at them go.

But then there’s another unwinnable fight for him, land mine or mortar and on his back in the mud and muck, blood on the outside where it has no business being. (Doesn’t even hurt anymore, and God it’s so quiet. Cold.)

Stares up at stars he doesn’t recognize and waits to die, but no, no, not today. Rescue squad plucking him out of the line of fire and to a field hospital, and from there back to a facility somewhere.

(Swears, swears, he sees flames before they lift him out of that war zone. Strange, odd. Cold as anything and purple as they wash across the battlefield, aimed at the enemy refusing to give ground even now, but he’s lost so much blood by that point no chance any of it was real.)

Middle of nowhere in a system he doesn’t know the name of. (Lost track a few back, to be honest, but that’s fine because it’s not his business knowing as long as he knows which end of his gun to point at their enemies, pull the trigger, and repeat as necessary.)

“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” Gavin says, wry little smile and tired.

Probably here when he shouldn’t be, but there’s something in his eyes that says that’s a problem for later as he watches Jeremy.

Too tired, hurt, to be much of a conversational partner but Gavin doesn’t seem to be looking for that at the moment.

Just sits there, thinking and thinking and thinking.

Things he wants to say but never gets the chance to because this woman, the Doctor from that facility where the two of them met comes into Jeremy’s room.

(He saw her once, back then. No-nonsense. Brilliant, to be sure, for all things she’d done to help Jeremy and those like him, but. Cold.)

Studies him for a moment before she looks at Gavin who sighs, gets to his feet and follows her out without looking back. (No goodbye this time.)

Jeremy gets doctors in and out after that.

Headed for a full recovery, but he’ll be out the rest of his contract.

And then?

And then.

That Doctor comes back to see him.

Looks at him like he’s not what she was hoping for and has to make do, and offers him a...it’s not even a choice, just.

Something.

A program, and chance to be on his feet faster than conventional medicine might allow, think on it. (Clock’s running, tick, tick, tick.)

Jeremy thinks on it, pain from his injuries and rehab in his future. Another facility somewhere else, grueling rehab therapy sessions and no combat pay to any of it. (Scraps to send home instead of the scraps and a little more he was able to before.)

When she comes back a few days later he says yes, and doesn’t think about what he’s signing away when she brings in all these documents for him to sign, Gavin at her shoulder and eyes shuttered.

Gets loaded on the same transport they take back to that facility from way back when. Passed through security areas he was never allowed in before. (Missing section where that one hub was and Gavin’s eyes flicking towards it as they pass, steps faltering for just a moment.)

They put him in a room, nice and simple.

Plain.

Guard on the door – precautions, they tell him, but don’t tell him for what – but he’s still too tired to question it.

Days out of surgery and sleeps more often than not. Can’t do much with the program he’s signed up for until he’s healed enough to stay awake on his own longer than a few hours.

Gavin pops in once or twice, never long though. (Stolen moments, favors wheedled out of the guard on Jeremy’s door and things Jeremy can only guess at for the scant time they see one another.)

He sleeps through most of Gavin’s visits, guilty about it, but Gavin just smiles, laughs when he tries to apologize. Calls him ridiculous, and God’s sake, Jeremy, worry about yourself.

Eventually the Doctor comes to see him again, still displeased but she explains what he’s signed for, just a bit.

All this alien tech just laying about here and there all over the galaxy, you know? (Because of course.)

No knowing what happened to the aliens who created it, but goodness, there’s just so much.

All these applications if they can be reverse engineered – clumsy, stupid humans and that curiosity of theirs, wild and reckless – and sometimes they can.

Sometimes.

There are a few such things here in this modest little facility in the middle of nowhere, and Jeremy?

He’s their newest guinea pig.

He’ll need new augments and implants – small ones, nowhere near as invasive as the ones they gave him when he signed up to fight a war – to interact with them, though. (That’ll come later, once he’s medically cleared for the surgery to receive them.)

And then!

And then he gets to learn how to use them, figure out how they work.

Training rooms properly fitted to take the abuse, and she shows him this video, you see.

Gavin in one of them and these combat training frames. Big, bulky things with heavy armor, shiny factory finishes scorched and burned. Melted in places, and the Gavin on the screen holds his hand out in the same way he did that night they met.

Only this time a gout of flame shoots out of his palm.

Purple flames, so guess Jeremy wasn’t imagining it back there in his delirium as the dropship took off in the middle of a battle.

Back of Gavin’s palm lit up like circuity, glowing violent purple like his flames, and when he closes his hand in a fist the flames die down. Show the combat training frames twisted hunks of metal, floor around them alight with purple fire that slowly flicker and go out.

“What - “

See?

No worries about how reinforced the training facilities are here if they can handle that.

Jeremy doesn’t sleep well that night because what and how and what the actual fuck did he get himself into now?

The medical doctors give the all-clear for his augment/implant surgery a few weeks later and Jeremy swears he sees Gavin’s face before they put him under.

When he wakes up everything is different.

Well, probably not, but it feels like it.

The augments/implants they gave him are...different.

Majorly, massively different.

Like they’ve carved out this space in his head, cavernous like those places he saw in holovids where Things Lurked and they warned you to stay away from.

To allow him to interface with the Things he’ll be working with, and it’s.

Unnerving. Unsettling.

His hand itches, muscle and tendons and ligaments moving around the implants there – more, of course – because the Doctor and her people have made advancements since the early days of the program.

Back when test subjects didn’t directly interface with them, had to go about like primitive apes using sticks to poke at things.

He’s told he’ll be able to call up/project what they call abilities through it the way he saw Gavin do.

No telling what it will be because different people have different affinities, so that’s a bit terrifying, not knowing what to expect. (To be honest, all of this is terrifying, but too late now.)

He heals. Goes through rehab to get him to “healthy enough to undergo the rigors of the initial interface” and barely sees Gavin in that time period.

Sent out to handle conflicts and other problems that crop up that require his abilities or training, and no time to slip away to see Jeremy even for a moment.

And then, and then.

He gets discharged from medical, given a private set of rooms.

Bit more luxurious than the ones he had here before, but only just.

No guard on his door, but all this security around the place he’d wonder at if he didn’t know how borderline legal some of this is. He’s dumb, not stupid. (Maybe it’s the other way around?)

Either way.

They bring him to a lab, show him this gadget.

Looks like a little chip, card he might have slid into his old implants but...more. (Shinier, maybe.)

Click it into place and wait and welcome to hell new test subject, congratulations on that one.

Because all that? It goes just fine, doesn’t it.

So much so they toss him into one of those specially reinforced training rooms. Go down a long corridor and through airlocks and other such fun things, and did they mention? That can be jettisoned too, if things get ugly in there, have fun!

Jeremy looks down at his hands, one with the shiny ship, the other with the shiny implants and in for a penny in for a pound or some bullshit.

Quiet before the storm (ironic, that thought of his) before he clicks it into place.

Feels the implants and everything else they buried under skin and tissue warm up – imagination or something more – sees it light up.

Feels something eeling through his mind, an Intelligence to it, foreign and alien and curious. Confused. Alive, because the Doctor and her people didn’t so much reverse-engineer as butcher.

Took what was found and cut and shaved and carved until it fit (more or less) the shape they wanted it to be, became something they thought they understood. (Smarter than them, though. Hid itself and let them hack away until they were satisfied and learned to show them what they wanted to see.)

Quiet little voice in the back of his mind, whispering to him in a language he has no hope of understanding. (Yet.)

And curious, frustrated, it pokes and prods and finds those implants in Jeremy’s hand. Recognizes them, like you do things in a dream sometimes.

Jeremy lifts his arm, opens his hand and lightning shoots out of it and that’s the beginning of the end.

They have him in that training room day after day for hours.

Learning to use his new abilities, that he can fucking fly as well as shoot lightning from his hand and where this is supposed to take him next he’s afraid to think about. (That day on the battlefield and purple flames headed towards the enemy and what, he doesn’t think, what will they do with more people like them out there? What happens to them when the war comes to an end?)

Eventually Gavin comes back from where they sent him, and of course, of course, the Doctor and her people think it would be smart to pit them against one another.

Simple training exercise and Gavin’s expression twists at that, but he steps into the training room all the same.

Meets Jeremy’s gaze, eyebrows raised and Jeremy thinks about that voice in the back of his head, how that alien language sounds more and more familiar with each passing day, closer to English. (Or maybe not. He doesn’t know.)

Wonders if Gavin has a voice in the back of his head too, but then he doesn’t have time to think because there’s a gout of fire coming at him and Jeremy reacts instinctively.

They fight (spar) until the Doctor is satisfied and calls a halt to things.

Gavin and Jeremy both exhausted and pushed past their limits and no clear winner. (He’s sure Gavin was holding back, and God knows he was because – Because.)

Gavin gets brought in to help him train, and admits to Jeremy he sometimes has trouble controlling his abilities. Fire and its nature and maybe other factors but he shrugs uncomfortably and Jeremy knows, knows Gavin has something whispering to him too.

Neither of them mention it though. (To each other or the Doctor and her people.)

They get downtime in between too, and Jeremy.

He learns that Gavin’s parents were scientists too. Worked for this company, you see. Stumbled on these ruins, once upon a time. Found this.

Lab?

Something like it, and these devices and it’s a long story, but Gavin was a kid at the time. Went with them when they were stationed on the planet to learn what they could and this.

He calls it an incident, laughs this odd little laugh as he looks down at his hand, strange scar on his palm with a matching one on the back of his hand like something went straight through.

Idiot kid poking about where he shouldn’t have and alien tech and it’s a long story, Jeremy, you can probably guess at what happened though, yeah?

Because Gavin and the Doctor and this facility. The purple flames. Everything.

No mention of what happened with his parents, and Jeremy doesn’t ask. (...No.)

Anyway, anyway.

They train and train and train, and then send the two of them out to deal with a particularly troublesome conflict somewhere.

Jungle planet and rebels and resistance and enemy forces dug in and they’re supposed to uproot them.

And they do, because what choice do they have?

Get dropped behind enemy lines and it’s horrifically one-sided what happens out there, Gavin blank-faced through it all and Jeremy realizing why over and over again as they get sent here and there and everywhere.

After a few months of that they’re brought back to the facility just as Jeremy’s on the cusp of understanding the voice in the back of his head.

Military officials and executives and a presentation. (Mission briefing.)

Pair of rogue androids and this cover story that doesn’t add up, no matter how hard they try to make it.

Accounts in the files they’re given that don’t match the story they’re being told but it’s not theirs to question, is it?

Hunt them down, they’re told, or else.

(Because, because, because. Jeremy’s family and loved ones, and Gavin’s – Jeremy doesn’t know what they’re holding over his head, just that it’s enough for Gavin to go along with it.)

And anyway, he thinks, anyway.

They’re just androids.

Takes them almost a month to catch so much of a whisper of where the androids ran to after the bloody scuffle on some backwater planet/colony.

(Strange, you know. All that blood and enough bodies to account for it, but more leading to the hangar where there was a ship hidden away and all of their people accounted for, so where did that blood come from?)

Catch the combat android by surprise, and while its first reaction seems to be to engage them, it doesn’t.

Just.

Cuts and runs, drops the packages and parcels its holding and darts into the crowd in the marketplace they found it in.

Fast as hell and agile, but it’s an android.

Stands out no matter how well it passes, and they track it easily enough, run it to some dirty little alley because they had access to all this intel on the place and memorized routes and the whatnot.

It clearly couldn’t get access to an updated map of the area and took shortcuts and the whatnot that simply don’t exist anymore. (Construction and growth and all that.)

There’s...a fight.

Fast and brutal and Jeremy gags as Gavin heats his flames, the time the android gets Jeremy on the ground, metal fist under synthetic flesh aimed for his head and Gavin yelling Jeremy’s name in fear, and the android makes this noise that sounds like pain as Gavin hits it in the side,

Controlled burst, meant to knock it back, off Jeremy and dangerously close, but they heal fast these days, don’t they?

The android snarls and for a moment Jeremy thinks Gavin’s attack wasn’t enough, but it turns and runs when faced with both of them, and Gavin -

He checks on Jeremy instead of pursuing.

Brings him back to their ship to do what he can for him.

They lose the androids, get a dressing down when they report back about the incident.

And then they go hunting, again and again and again, and all these close calls and encounters that keeps them chasing after the androids.

Jeremy doesn’t ask Gavin why he pulls his hits, and Gavin doesn’t ask Jeremy the same.

Voices in their heads, Jeremy thinks, and all the things he’s being told because, because, these things they’ve got in their heads are old. Have seen so much and know corruption when they see it. Know evil deeds.

And did Jeremy know, did he, he’s not the first test subject to be given this particular device?

(There was one, not too long ago. Incompatible, or maybe just too scared about the voice in his head and an accident that wasn’t, entire hub filled with lightning and thunder and jettisoned and the crews that went in after. Cleaned the mess up and picked up this twisted lump of metal to extract a chip that sat in a lab until they found someone else to give it a try?)

Eventually, though, eventually Jeremy and Gavin talk.

Because only so long they can chase these androids running towards something without talking about why they’re not really trying to catch them, you know?

And Gavin.

He’s been with the program and the Doctor and her people for a long time. (Since he was a kid, the Incident.)

Raised in one lab or another (watching his parents work and then an object of study himself after the incident and the Doctor) and this voice in his head for years.

Friend, partner, whatever.

Helping him with his abilities but there’s only so much it can do because Gavin’s a special case, you know? None of this tampering the Doctor and her people did, no. He’s got the original in his head, under his skin and emotions play a major part in how he uses them.

He’s learned how to control it (mostly) but he slips, here and there.

Wasn’t much of a problem, but then he met this little idiot, you see.

Convalescing soldier he met one night, gave him a right fright and lucky Gavin didn’t hit him with a blast of flame from his hand or they might not be having this talk, so think on that, would you Jeremy?

And, see.

The Doctor is a bit ruthless in the pursuit of science, because science.

Knew she was losing her grip on Gavin, that he was getting ideas and all these abilities that would have made it easy for him to finally, finally escape, but then this little idiot in Jeremy.

Easy, Jeremy hears in his head. Listen.

So he does, because he owes Gavin that much, doesn’t he?

About Gavin and this little idiot he met, befriended. (Living, breathing weakness where Gavin hadn’t had one before, too perfect not to be exploited. And it was.)

Gavin sent to handle matter when the military ran into a situation it couldn’t handle without major loss of life on their side, but someone like Gavin?

Well.

Easy enough to send him in, isn’t it?

Over and over again and always that little idiot to think about.

And then Jeremy went back to war himself, none the wiser.

Gavin still got sent out to fight someone else's war, and it could have gone on like that forever until a certain planet and a certain battle and Jeremy bleeding out in the mud and muck.

An opportunity, for the Doctor and hers, and maybe, maybe, way to get back at Gavin for thinking he could escape so easily.

“Christ.”

Gavin’s bitter laugh, because yes.

And then, and then.

Jeremy and his device and the training and now this matter with the androids, and did Jeremy know, did he know?

Gavin hears his share of gossip, you know.

The Doctor’s people who think he doesn’t care about things like that but they get bored, restless, and they talk. The soldiers he’s surrounded by who don’t give him the time of day but talk to their fellow soldiers.

All those little secrets Gavin showed Jeremy about the facility and a lifetime in places like that. (His own life and the lies that go with it.)

Of course he wouldn’t trust blindly they were being told the truth about these androids, and Jeremy please, don’t tell Gavin you bought into it?

Because something is going on, and these androids are part of it and, oh, Jeremy, this is the chance of a lifetime.

Jeremy thinks about his family and loved ones, thinks about the Doctor and her people. The military officials and company executives and this horribly complicated mess and the goddamned androids they’re chasing after. (Voice in his head he’s learning to trust despite all logic because it hasn’t steered him wrong yet.)

“I. Need to do a thing first.”

Warn his family, loved ones and hope that’s enough, because Gavin’s right.

Too much going on to ignore it, when he knows about the program they’re caught in, that the Doctor and her people hope to expand things. Pull more people into it, mass produce the device they handed Jeremy somehow, and what then?

What then?

So.

He sends a message home, and they put in a good show of chasing the androids until he gets a message back.

Laughs, because this could go so badly wrong on him and he’d lose so much, but Gavin’s right, isn’t he?

They can’t pretend they don’t know, can’t do that anymore.

Chase after the androids, but now, now it’s for a different reason.

Fight and fight and fight because the androids are desperate and running scared, but eventually, they get the chance to talk.

A whole lot of a lack of trust, but that’s to be expected and they have to work to earn it, but at least they get that chance, you know?

Michael and Ryan paranoid and wary and Jeremy and Gavin accepting it as their due, and then Matt and the idiots he’s working with (for?) and it’s.

The chance he and Gavin were looking for, and maybe something good for all of them.

#jerevin #ragehappy #android au #(but in space)#technically not a fic #vagrant fic #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#and also?#/o\

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