Agent Washington (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hatesimprovising) wrote2016-05-24 11:11 pm
hatesimprovising) wrote2016-05-24 11:11 pm
Entry tags:
canon update info
Character Name: Agent Washington
Previous Canon Point: 10x18 flashback
New Canon Point: 7x04
Detailed Description of New Canon Information: After Wash had Epsilon removed, the other Freelancers learned about what had been done to Alpha--or at least, some of it. Essentially, they knew what was going on in the program was wrong, and those that still had their AI wished to keep them and/or didn't want to be part of the program any longer, so they left. They broke out, separated, and hid from the Project for their own safety.
Cut to a long span of time later, Washington has recovered. ...Mostly. He's not exactly back to "normal" or remotely perfectly healed after Epsilon, but he's well enough that he can function without danger of slipping back into trauma, and Project Freelancer needed his help. Something was killing off agents, hunting them down and murdering them in order to take their equipment, particularly their AIs. Naturally the Director didn't want them to fall into the wrong hands, lest the UNSC find out what had been done to the single AI. he'd been given. At that point, Washington was the only Freelancer left and the only one they could truly trust with the job to follow distress beacons of fallen agents in order to recover their equipment before something else did. This was because, after what had happened with Epsilon, he was not looking to ever have another program sharing his mind, thus he wouldn't steal and use any that he recovered. That, and he was willing to stay relatively within their good graces for a shot at some revenge, should the opportunity ever present itself.
At that point though, knowing everything he did from Epsilon and knowing that the Project had been lying to all of the Freelancers the entire time, using them and manipulating them, Washington was no longer the same old goody-two shoes. He took on a very new personality. The essentials were still there, perhaps, buried under piles of anger and betrayal, but most likely still there. Regardless of what may or may not have still been there, he was now a very bitter, very jaded individual with far less patience and not caring so much about following orders. He'd still stick to standard protocols, at least.
Working as a recovery agent, he wanted the Project to believe they could still trust him. That would make his ultimate goal of taking down what was left of the program far easier. So he did the job; he scavenged deceased agents' bodies for their equipment and destroyed what remained. He only ever managed to recover one AI before it was stolen by the person trying to collect them all, and this was simply because the AI's host was killed in an unrelated firefight.
The AI, Delta, was used as bait, in a way. Wash knew that with Delta in his possession, the one seeking all the AI would come to him and he could attempt to take them down and end the whole thing. As it was, however, he ran into a fellow agent first. How? Well, he followed a recovery beacon leading him directly to her twin brother, who was killed for his AI. Big surprise. South (Dakota) was only left alive, it was thought, because she had no AI of her own. She'd been in the implant group behind Wash and thus never got her own. Not after what happened to him. She was jealous, too, that much was easy to see.
Though given orders by Command to kill the remaining Dakota, as everything had to remain absolutely quiet and nothing about any of this mess could get out, Wash refused to do it. He played it off that he did, had Delta update the Project's information to list her and her brother North as K.I.A., and decided to use her to assist him in taking down the enemy. He could use all the help he could get. Their current enemy had killed agents with a higher battle rating than Wash himself with what seemed like no effort. Help seemed like a requirement if he was going to succeed.
Things...didn't go as planned, though. He probably shouldn't have been surprised. Giving Delta to South so she could implant to use the program to their advantage and keep it safe, it seemed she'd gotten what she wanted. Instead of helping Wash as a firefight broke out, she shot him in the back and left him for the enemy so she could escape with Delta. Turned out, that had more or less been the plan all along. South had also been working for Command; Wash had been set up by the people he was working for just so they could get a glimpse of what they were up against, of who was stealing their precious equipment. Again, he'd been used, and South had left him to die as his equipment was scavenged. She'd done it all so she could get her own AI, an agreement made with Command, though instead of going back to get one of her own, she held on to Delta.
Now, thankfully Washington didn't actually die. He survived, was brought back and healed, and again he had to go through a recovery process, though this one physical rather than mental. At that point, however, he only started to get further from his old self--the bitterness only increased after being completely betrayed by a former teammate, by someone he'd always considered a friend; he harboured more anger and found himself no longer able to trust anyone. The little bit of him that still could, despite everything the Project had done, had been completely eliminated and wiped out.
Where we pick up again, there have been more attacks, more AI stolen, all by the person who has been given the name of "the Meta." The Meta, being another former Freelancer, who had previously been under the codename of Agent Maine. Wash was sent to gather more information on the most recent attack, taken upon someone suspected to have been the capturer of the AI named Omega, and found himself in need of some assistance from people who had dealt with the aggressive intelligence program before.
Unfortunately, those with the experience were essentially a band of idiots--sim troopers, "soldiers" that were placed into fake bases in a fake war between each other to be used as practice for Freelancers in training. Not that the idiots are exactly aware of any of this. They were almost impossible to deal with for Washington, as they were horribly immature, constantly arguing, and not exactly much assistance in battle.
It was basically one giant wild goose chase in an effort to track the Meta down and defeat him, to eliminate the threat and get all the AI back, full of nothing but frustrations and failures. To cut a long story short, after a cryptic clue was left by Delta (who was retrieved when the group ran into South while she was being attacked by the Meta, who they managed to fend off for the time being, though he still got away. It should be noted that South was killed by Wash personally, in part for revenge, and in part to keep her, injured and not opposed to throwing someone else under the bus in an act of self-preservation, from hampering their progress), Washington took them all to Command, to Project Freelancer's headquarters, to end the whole thing once and for all. Taking one certain sim trooper with him, leaving the others to keep watch while he was busy, Washington lead the trooper by the name of Church down into the AI storage room, where all the fragments not in use were stored. As it turned out (and this is a horribly brief summary), Church was actually the Alpha; he'd been disguised in a robot body and sent out under the belief that he was a human soldier to live in a backwater canyon with a bunch of idiots where no one could find him, where no one would think to look for the fabled Alpha. Wash tried to explain this all to Church after finding the one AI that could actually help end what was left of the Project entirely, that could be used as proof of the horrible things the Director had done--Epsilon. Turned out, it was cheaper to store an AI than it was to delete it, despite what they'd told Washington about what they did with the unstable fragment after it tried to kill itself in his head.
Of course, Church didn't believe the story at first, about him being the Alpha, but after some serious convincing, he at least agreed to help Washington in the final stand (again this is all very hurried as this whole plot is extremely complex and long). Thus, the Freelancer sent Epsilon with the rest of the sim troopers to be taken to safety and then be delivered to the UNSC so the Director would be charged for everything he'd done, knowing that the Meta wouldn't go after them when he could get into the building that held so many more AI.
Washington led the Meta down into the lab, himself with Alpha implanted for the time being. Now, he knew full well that this was essentially a suicide mission. He wasn't expecting to get out alive, but that was perfectly okay with him. All Wash wanted to do was get his revenge on the Director, on the Project, for what was done to him and for what was done to his team--his friends. If he died taking down the remainder of the Project, then he died as happily as he could. He had nothing else to live for at this point, anyway.
The Meta was drawn down after him, and another long story short, Alpha distracted the Meta and the several AI housed within while Washington entered the codes for the building's failsafe--an electromagnetic pulse. The EMP ended up going off successfully, destroying all electronic equipment in the building, each and every AI included.
He thought it was finally over.
Somehow managing to find himself alive after it all, Washington also found himself in prison for crimes he didn't commit, with the exception of destroying military intel and evidence against the Director and the Project. It wasn't exactly the end he'd envisioned, and things only got more complicated again when he received a call one day from one of the sim troopers who'd assisted him. Turns out, they didn't actually turn in Epsilon like they were supposed to, and Wash sees an opportunity in that. He'll be returning to the Moira just after this call, but before he has a conversation with the Chairman, the one who put him in prison, about getting Epsilon back.
Any Notable Changes in Personality or Appearance: Past experiences have left Wash extremely bitter and jaded. It's hard not to be when it turns out that everything you believed you were working for ended up being a lie, that he had simply been used and manipulated without even knowing it. Naturally, he harbours a fair amount of anger and not exactly the longest string of patience attached to it. It's not difficult at all to make him snap--one wrong move, one effort to argue against something he's said as a final word, and he'll be the opposite of pleased. He expects to be listened to, expects those under his command to just shut up and do as he says because arguing wields no results, and he's got no time to put up with any bitching. He's got no patience to put up with it and, quite honestly, he could care less.
A rather closed-off individual now, Washington is not one for sharing emotions. He'd much rather keep a wall up between him and everyone around him; he doesn't want to appear weak and simply doesn't want to share anything about himself with anyone. If it's not necessary information, he's not about to share it--and those aren't just words he lives by when it comes to emotions or thoughts, but in essentially anything. If he needs your help, he's not about to tell you anything more than you absolutely need to know to be of any assistance to him. People can't be trusted. That's basically become a philosophy of his, and one can hardly blame him. In the past, he'd been so trusting, trusted everyone easily and without as much as a second thought, only to have it end badly. This trust was used against him, taken advantage of one too many times, and on one occasion leaving him betrayed by a former teammate, a friend. Shot in the back and left behind to die, just so she could get away. There's not a single scrap of trust left in him, often causing him to be suspicious of the motives of others and somewhat wary around them, never letting his guard down and always prepared for whatever they might throw at him.
Cold, brusque, and rather blunt, deadpanning often, Wash is straight to the point, believing there's no point in beating around the bush as it leaves you with the same result, it just takes a lot longer to get there. That being said, he's also quite determined. After being screwed over time and time again, done with putting up with it all, he'll do whatever he has to in order to get what he wants. Whatever it takes, he just doesn't care anymore. If he has to hurt a few people, he's getting to the point where he's okay with that. He's starting to get past the point of caring what happens to people after no one's cared about what happened to him for so long.
There's still a sense of humour in there somewhere, buried under all the negative stuff that continually piles up on him. It's rare for it to come out anymore, as he only seems to have hardened more and more as time goes on, but on the very, very rarest of occasions, you might catch a peek at it. It's extremely dry, always dripping in sarcasm, and can be quite easy to miss. Not that he really cares, he doesn't exactly joke to other peoples' benefit anymore. That being said, obviously he's not an easy guy to make happy. In fact, he's not been happy in a very long time. When things only seem to get continually worse for you, when you've lost everything, it's pretty hard to see any reason to be remotely cheerful. Things don't seem like they'll ever get any better, no matter what he does, and constant defeat is not easy on a person's satisfaction with their life.
Wash is a smart guy though, all said and done. Not a genius by any stretch, but he's intelligent, quick-witted, and he finally uses it to his advantage. Piecing things together isn't a difficult task for him. This plays a part in him becoming rather good at improvising. In the past he was terrible with it, finding himself frustrated too easily and too daunted under the stress, but now...well, he's better under stress. Probably has something to do with the fact that, when you've got all this knowledge that you're not supposed to have, and if you so much as let part of it slip, you'll end up dead, you're under nothing but stress to improvise. You'd get used to it after a while. So, quick in his mind and on his feet, Wash is capable of turning a situation around when he's stuck. ...On occasion. Even he's not able to work himself out of an impossible situation, but he'll be damned if it stops him from trying.
It should also be stated that after the incident with Epsilon, he hasn't exactly recovered in full. He's not at risk of losing it anymore, but he's not well. Certainly, he can appear totally fine. He's gotten pretty great at hiding it--he had to--and can quite easily come off as completely stable. That's what he wants you to believe, and that's what he wants to believe, too. He doesn't want to still have memories in his head that don't belong to him--the twisted and painful memories that made him so unstable in the first place--and he certainly doesn't want to have difficulty distinguishing between thoughts left behind by the AI as it drove itself out of its mind. He wants to be fine, so he pretends to be fine. It's the only method he has to cope.
In terms of his appearance changing (and I should note that aside from the changes in armour, this is all headcanon), Wash most noticeably looks older. It's only been about two years since he was on the Moira the first time, but the heavy stress has gotten to him. Epsilon alone aged him a good few years, but when you add in everything else on top of that? Yeah, he looks pretty weary. He's got constant dark circles under his eyes from all the sleep that he hasn't gotten since Epsilon and his hair has already started turning grey at his temples. He's picked up some new scars, too--most notably the bullet wound on the right side of his chest from fighting the Meta at Freelancer Command, as well as the other bullet wound on his back, scarily close to his spine, put there by South when she betrayed him. Other than that, his armour has changed some. It's still his signature grey and yellow, but the yellow accents have changed/moved a little.
Previous Canon Point: 10x18 flashback
New Canon Point: 7x04
Detailed Description of New Canon Information: After Wash had Epsilon removed, the other Freelancers learned about what had been done to Alpha--or at least, some of it. Essentially, they knew what was going on in the program was wrong, and those that still had their AI wished to keep them and/or didn't want to be part of the program any longer, so they left. They broke out, separated, and hid from the Project for their own safety.
Cut to a long span of time later, Washington has recovered. ...Mostly. He's not exactly back to "normal" or remotely perfectly healed after Epsilon, but he's well enough that he can function without danger of slipping back into trauma, and Project Freelancer needed his help. Something was killing off agents, hunting them down and murdering them in order to take their equipment, particularly their AIs. Naturally the Director didn't want them to fall into the wrong hands, lest the UNSC find out what had been done to the single AI. he'd been given. At that point, Washington was the only Freelancer left and the only one they could truly trust with the job to follow distress beacons of fallen agents in order to recover their equipment before something else did. This was because, after what had happened with Epsilon, he was not looking to ever have another program sharing his mind, thus he wouldn't steal and use any that he recovered. That, and he was willing to stay relatively within their good graces for a shot at some revenge, should the opportunity ever present itself.
At that point though, knowing everything he did from Epsilon and knowing that the Project had been lying to all of the Freelancers the entire time, using them and manipulating them, Washington was no longer the same old goody-two shoes. He took on a very new personality. The essentials were still there, perhaps, buried under piles of anger and betrayal, but most likely still there. Regardless of what may or may not have still been there, he was now a very bitter, very jaded individual with far less patience and not caring so much about following orders. He'd still stick to standard protocols, at least.
Working as a recovery agent, he wanted the Project to believe they could still trust him. That would make his ultimate goal of taking down what was left of the program far easier. So he did the job; he scavenged deceased agents' bodies for their equipment and destroyed what remained. He only ever managed to recover one AI before it was stolen by the person trying to collect them all, and this was simply because the AI's host was killed in an unrelated firefight.
The AI, Delta, was used as bait, in a way. Wash knew that with Delta in his possession, the one seeking all the AI would come to him and he could attempt to take them down and end the whole thing. As it was, however, he ran into a fellow agent first. How? Well, he followed a recovery beacon leading him directly to her twin brother, who was killed for his AI. Big surprise. South (Dakota) was only left alive, it was thought, because she had no AI of her own. She'd been in the implant group behind Wash and thus never got her own. Not after what happened to him. She was jealous, too, that much was easy to see.
Though given orders by Command to kill the remaining Dakota, as everything had to remain absolutely quiet and nothing about any of this mess could get out, Wash refused to do it. He played it off that he did, had Delta update the Project's information to list her and her brother North as K.I.A., and decided to use her to assist him in taking down the enemy. He could use all the help he could get. Their current enemy had killed agents with a higher battle rating than Wash himself with what seemed like no effort. Help seemed like a requirement if he was going to succeed.
Things...didn't go as planned, though. He probably shouldn't have been surprised. Giving Delta to South so she could implant to use the program to their advantage and keep it safe, it seemed she'd gotten what she wanted. Instead of helping Wash as a firefight broke out, she shot him in the back and left him for the enemy so she could escape with Delta. Turned out, that had more or less been the plan all along. South had also been working for Command; Wash had been set up by the people he was working for just so they could get a glimpse of what they were up against, of who was stealing their precious equipment. Again, he'd been used, and South had left him to die as his equipment was scavenged. She'd done it all so she could get her own AI, an agreement made with Command, though instead of going back to get one of her own, she held on to Delta.
Now, thankfully Washington didn't actually die. He survived, was brought back and healed, and again he had to go through a recovery process, though this one physical rather than mental. At that point, however, he only started to get further from his old self--the bitterness only increased after being completely betrayed by a former teammate, by someone he'd always considered a friend; he harboured more anger and found himself no longer able to trust anyone. The little bit of him that still could, despite everything the Project had done, had been completely eliminated and wiped out.
Where we pick up again, there have been more attacks, more AI stolen, all by the person who has been given the name of "the Meta." The Meta, being another former Freelancer, who had previously been under the codename of Agent Maine. Wash was sent to gather more information on the most recent attack, taken upon someone suspected to have been the capturer of the AI named Omega, and found himself in need of some assistance from people who had dealt with the aggressive intelligence program before.
Unfortunately, those with the experience were essentially a band of idiots--sim troopers, "soldiers" that were placed into fake bases in a fake war between each other to be used as practice for Freelancers in training. Not that the idiots are exactly aware of any of this. They were almost impossible to deal with for Washington, as they were horribly immature, constantly arguing, and not exactly much assistance in battle.
It was basically one giant wild goose chase in an effort to track the Meta down and defeat him, to eliminate the threat and get all the AI back, full of nothing but frustrations and failures. To cut a long story short, after a cryptic clue was left by Delta (who was retrieved when the group ran into South while she was being attacked by the Meta, who they managed to fend off for the time being, though he still got away. It should be noted that South was killed by Wash personally, in part for revenge, and in part to keep her, injured and not opposed to throwing someone else under the bus in an act of self-preservation, from hampering their progress), Washington took them all to Command, to Project Freelancer's headquarters, to end the whole thing once and for all. Taking one certain sim trooper with him, leaving the others to keep watch while he was busy, Washington lead the trooper by the name of Church down into the AI storage room, where all the fragments not in use were stored. As it turned out (and this is a horribly brief summary), Church was actually the Alpha; he'd been disguised in a robot body and sent out under the belief that he was a human soldier to live in a backwater canyon with a bunch of idiots where no one could find him, where no one would think to look for the fabled Alpha. Wash tried to explain this all to Church after finding the one AI that could actually help end what was left of the Project entirely, that could be used as proof of the horrible things the Director had done--Epsilon. Turned out, it was cheaper to store an AI than it was to delete it, despite what they'd told Washington about what they did with the unstable fragment after it tried to kill itself in his head.
Of course, Church didn't believe the story at first, about him being the Alpha, but after some serious convincing, he at least agreed to help Washington in the final stand (again this is all very hurried as this whole plot is extremely complex and long). Thus, the Freelancer sent Epsilon with the rest of the sim troopers to be taken to safety and then be delivered to the UNSC so the Director would be charged for everything he'd done, knowing that the Meta wouldn't go after them when he could get into the building that held so many more AI.
Washington led the Meta down into the lab, himself with Alpha implanted for the time being. Now, he knew full well that this was essentially a suicide mission. He wasn't expecting to get out alive, but that was perfectly okay with him. All Wash wanted to do was get his revenge on the Director, on the Project, for what was done to him and for what was done to his team--his friends. If he died taking down the remainder of the Project, then he died as happily as he could. He had nothing else to live for at this point, anyway.
The Meta was drawn down after him, and another long story short, Alpha distracted the Meta and the several AI housed within while Washington entered the codes for the building's failsafe--an electromagnetic pulse. The EMP ended up going off successfully, destroying all electronic equipment in the building, each and every AI included.
He thought it was finally over.
Somehow managing to find himself alive after it all, Washington also found himself in prison for crimes he didn't commit, with the exception of destroying military intel and evidence against the Director and the Project. It wasn't exactly the end he'd envisioned, and things only got more complicated again when he received a call one day from one of the sim troopers who'd assisted him. Turns out, they didn't actually turn in Epsilon like they were supposed to, and Wash sees an opportunity in that. He'll be returning to the Moira just after this call, but before he has a conversation with the Chairman, the one who put him in prison, about getting Epsilon back.
Any Notable Changes in Personality or Appearance: Past experiences have left Wash extremely bitter and jaded. It's hard not to be when it turns out that everything you believed you were working for ended up being a lie, that he had simply been used and manipulated without even knowing it. Naturally, he harbours a fair amount of anger and not exactly the longest string of patience attached to it. It's not difficult at all to make him snap--one wrong move, one effort to argue against something he's said as a final word, and he'll be the opposite of pleased. He expects to be listened to, expects those under his command to just shut up and do as he says because arguing wields no results, and he's got no time to put up with any bitching. He's got no patience to put up with it and, quite honestly, he could care less.
A rather closed-off individual now, Washington is not one for sharing emotions. He'd much rather keep a wall up between him and everyone around him; he doesn't want to appear weak and simply doesn't want to share anything about himself with anyone. If it's not necessary information, he's not about to share it--and those aren't just words he lives by when it comes to emotions or thoughts, but in essentially anything. If he needs your help, he's not about to tell you anything more than you absolutely need to know to be of any assistance to him. People can't be trusted. That's basically become a philosophy of his, and one can hardly blame him. In the past, he'd been so trusting, trusted everyone easily and without as much as a second thought, only to have it end badly. This trust was used against him, taken advantage of one too many times, and on one occasion leaving him betrayed by a former teammate, a friend. Shot in the back and left behind to die, just so she could get away. There's not a single scrap of trust left in him, often causing him to be suspicious of the motives of others and somewhat wary around them, never letting his guard down and always prepared for whatever they might throw at him.
Cold, brusque, and rather blunt, deadpanning often, Wash is straight to the point, believing there's no point in beating around the bush as it leaves you with the same result, it just takes a lot longer to get there. That being said, he's also quite determined. After being screwed over time and time again, done with putting up with it all, he'll do whatever he has to in order to get what he wants. Whatever it takes, he just doesn't care anymore. If he has to hurt a few people, he's getting to the point where he's okay with that. He's starting to get past the point of caring what happens to people after no one's cared about what happened to him for so long.
There's still a sense of humour in there somewhere, buried under all the negative stuff that continually piles up on him. It's rare for it to come out anymore, as he only seems to have hardened more and more as time goes on, but on the very, very rarest of occasions, you might catch a peek at it. It's extremely dry, always dripping in sarcasm, and can be quite easy to miss. Not that he really cares, he doesn't exactly joke to other peoples' benefit anymore. That being said, obviously he's not an easy guy to make happy. In fact, he's not been happy in a very long time. When things only seem to get continually worse for you, when you've lost everything, it's pretty hard to see any reason to be remotely cheerful. Things don't seem like they'll ever get any better, no matter what he does, and constant defeat is not easy on a person's satisfaction with their life.
Wash is a smart guy though, all said and done. Not a genius by any stretch, but he's intelligent, quick-witted, and he finally uses it to his advantage. Piecing things together isn't a difficult task for him. This plays a part in him becoming rather good at improvising. In the past he was terrible with it, finding himself frustrated too easily and too daunted under the stress, but now...well, he's better under stress. Probably has something to do with the fact that, when you've got all this knowledge that you're not supposed to have, and if you so much as let part of it slip, you'll end up dead, you're under nothing but stress to improvise. You'd get used to it after a while. So, quick in his mind and on his feet, Wash is capable of turning a situation around when he's stuck. ...On occasion. Even he's not able to work himself out of an impossible situation, but he'll be damned if it stops him from trying.
It should also be stated that after the incident with Epsilon, he hasn't exactly recovered in full. He's not at risk of losing it anymore, but he's not well. Certainly, he can appear totally fine. He's gotten pretty great at hiding it--he had to--and can quite easily come off as completely stable. That's what he wants you to believe, and that's what he wants to believe, too. He doesn't want to still have memories in his head that don't belong to him--the twisted and painful memories that made him so unstable in the first place--and he certainly doesn't want to have difficulty distinguishing between thoughts left behind by the AI as it drove itself out of its mind. He wants to be fine, so he pretends to be fine. It's the only method he has to cope.
In terms of his appearance changing (and I should note that aside from the changes in armour, this is all headcanon), Wash most noticeably looks older. It's only been about two years since he was on the Moira the first time, but the heavy stress has gotten to him. Epsilon alone aged him a good few years, but when you add in everything else on top of that? Yeah, he looks pretty weary. He's got constant dark circles under his eyes from all the sleep that he hasn't gotten since Epsilon and his hair has already started turning grey at his temples. He's picked up some new scars, too--most notably the bullet wound on the right side of his chest from fighting the Meta at Freelancer Command, as well as the other bullet wound on his back, scarily close to his spine, put there by South when she betrayed him. Other than that, his armour has changed some. It's still his signature grey and yellow, but the yellow accents have changed/moved a little.