Part 3 of the "swap meet" series

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Gen

Fandom: Red vs. Blue

Relationships: Locus | Samuel Ortez & Michael J. Caboose, Dexter Grif & Locus | Samuel Ortez

Characters: Locus | Samuel Ortez, Lavernius Tucker, Michael J. Caboose, Dexter GrifDick Simmons, Vanessa Kimball

Additional Tags: Role Reversal, Role Swap, Simulation Trooper!Sam, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mercenary!Tucker, GFY, no betas we die like man, sim-sam makes his voice sound like roman torchwick, it's very important that i finally tell you guys this, i couldn't find a first name for rogers sooooo guess what tucker you got baby captain america killed

Additional Notes: Dedicated to Norcumi and Nighthaunting.

"You mean he's here?"

"Yeah. Just came in from the city."

"They still got the Freelancer up there?"

"I don't know—look it up inside."

"Fuh-ck that! I'm not gonna let him catch me slacking off!"

.

Sam's first thought is, Wash!

It's instinctive, relieved. Agent Washington is nearby; he'll be the leader that Sam isn't, fix everything that Sam can't. Like he said—instinctive. But the guards said Wash is in 'the city,' or at least was, and someone else is here now. Someone who wasn't meant to be, and inspires enough fear in the Federal soldiers to keep them from slacking off.

Tucker gave him a sticky detonator and fifteen minutes before rendezvous—plenty of time to sneak into the server room the guards had indicated, gather information, and leave before the charges went off. "Captain Ortez, what's your status?"

Decisions, decisions. "Entering the lab, requesting radio silence," Sam replies, setting the TEAMCOM to mute. Text messages scroll across the bottom left of his HUD but he ignores them, activating the camo-unit and ghosting into the room to press the hilt of his sword against the base of the guard's spine. "Move, or call for help, and Felix 's little unexpected visit will be the least of your problems. I hear that bisection is an awful way to die; the cauterization from the plasma actually makes the pain worse, if you can believe it."

The guard takes a shuddering breath. "Wh-what do you want?"

"I want you to take this drive," he says, pulling the data-stick from its pouch beneath his chest-plate, "and download Federal Army base locations, troop movements, mission reports, and every scrap of information on the Freelancer and simulation troopers in Federal custody that you have access to. Quickly, quietly, and without alerting anyone or anything to my intrusion."

After a few seconds of nervous typing, the guard says, "Everything is copying over."

"Good," Sam purrs, letting his voice deepen to its natural pitch. "Now, I want you to go to sleep." He lowers the Federal soldier's body to the ground carefully, calculating the likelihood of concussion or brain damage, and nearly slices through Jason when he appears without warning. The young man—boy, really—throws himself backwards to avoid the super-heated blade.

"Shit! Sorry, sir," Cunningham apologizes, shifting in his clearly-pilfered Federal uniform. "You weren't answering your radio, so Tucker sent me in to find you. Rogers, too, he's searching the lab at the other end of the compound."

Motherfucker, Sam almost swears aloud. What is that man doing? "Sorry about that," he says instead, forcing his voice back up to its usual Private Ortez pitch. "Saw a chance to gather the intelligence we came here for, which I told him before requesting radio silence, and I took it."

"Right, sorry again, sir, but we gotta go," he says, glancing over his shoulder nervously. "Like, now."

Sam frowns, weighing their options. "The download should be finished in just a minute." The transfer progress is at 71%. "Head back to the extraction point and I'll regroup with you separately. Same goes for Stevie—get out, and get out quickly. That's an order."

Jason looks like he wants to argue but nods and heads for the door. Just past the threshold, he lets out the very distinctive breath of someone who's just had their lung perforated, and slumps to the ground. Forty-eight seconds later, things begin exploding.

.

Sam doesn't so much as look at Tucker during the trip back.

.

The moment Caboose sees them, he sprints the rest of the way down the ramp and tackles Sam into a hug. Shaking off his icy rage for a moment, Sam winds an arm around Caboose's shoulders and scrubs his knuckles over the top of his helmet.

"When'd you get back?" Grif calls out, he and Simmons following Caboose at a more sedate pace. Thankfully, neither of them insist on hugging him as well.

"A little while ago," Sam says with a nod to the pair. His teammate seems content to stay in that position, so Sam shuffles them around until he has one arm wrapped firmly around Caboose and the other free to grab his sword. He very much wants to grab his sword.

"What happened?"

"Well," Tucker pipes up, moving from his spot by the ramp, as far away from Sam as possible while still being in the same room, "do you want the short, shitty version or the longer, also shitty, version?"

"Um," Simmons dithers, looking from Sam to the mercenary and back again. "… Ortez?"

The Sangheili sword that had at one point caused no small amount of grief for himself and his team appears in his hand without any conscious decision on Sam's part; Tucker remains out of range of its blade, but the implicit threat hikes the tension in the room up considerably.

"Mr. Tucker, here," Sam eventually says, fighting to keep his voice light and even, "decided to ignore both the mission objective and my explicit instructions and sent two members of Teal Squad into the field without my consent. A decision which cost them both their lives."

"Hey!" Tucker says defensively. "You're the one who stopped answering your radio! I had no clue where you were and no idea if you'd been compromised or not—I made a call, and might I remind you, that call saved your life."

His fingers tighten painfully around the hilt. "I told you exactly what I was doing, I specifically requested radio silence, and I ordered those men to stay behind to minimize any risk. You are the one who sent them off on a wild goose-chase instead of trusting me, you are the one who detonated the charges early, and you are the reason Stevie and Jason are dead!"

"Mmm, Tucker," Caboose interrupts from somewhere near Sam's ear. "I think you should stop talking now. Sam is getting very rumble-y and it is making it hard to focus."

"Focus—on—what?" Tucker asks through gritted teeth.

"That's enough, everyone," General Kimball calls from above them before anyone can answer, and Tucker subsides back into the shadows. "Captain Ortez," she continues, "your decision to go off alone led to the unfortunate deaths of two of your men. Tucker maintains that without his intervention, you would have been discovered; you claim otherwise. We may never know the answer to that question. Regardless, your actions did also grant us access to valuable information. Whether the exchange was worth it, whether what you did was the right thing or not, is a conclusion you'll have to come to on your own. I'll leave it at that."

Caboose squeezes his shoulders soothingly and Sam forces the fury out of his posture in increments while the general continues speaking. Unlocks his knees, loosens his hips, rolls his shoulders, shakes out his neck as the others exclaim over the intel about their stolen teammates. Not to imply he isn't paying attention to start with, but his focus zeroes in on Kimball and only her when she says, "When I first heard about you four, I envisioned strong, daring, respectable soldiers."

The part of Sam that used to belong to Private Ortez, or perhaps the part of Private Ortez that used to belong to Sam, freezes in place. 'Strong, daring, respectable soldiers' echoes in the silence of the general's brief pause and Caboose squeezes him even tighter than before. Sam squeezes back.

"But…?" Grif says cajolingly, delighted as always to put any kind of expectations of him to rest.

"But," Kimball repeats, sounding aggrieved, "now that I've come to know you, I've found you're something else entirely. It turns out you're all a bunch of—"

"Cowards."

"Idiots?"

"Spacemen."

"—misfits," Kimball finishes, ignoring the interruptions. The word makes it hard for Sam to breathe. "You're oddballs that don't exactly fit in. Which is why my soldiers all look up to you and why morale has been at an all-time high. Because they can relate to you. Because together, we're an army of underdogs and outcasts." She turns and speak directly to Sam next. "Even you, Captain Ortez, the most capable and competent of all your teammates—on every mission so far, you go it alone, never trusting the soldiers under your command to do their jobs, to have your back. And it's cost us."

"Oooh," Grif murmurs over the TEAMCOM, "called the fuck out."

"Pay attention, Dexter," Sam hisses back before muting him. It feels like his insides are being scooped out like ice cream by the general's gaze, by her accusations.

"As of right now, I cannot authorize a rescue mission of this scale," General Kimball sighs. "The risk of the mission breaking down like it does in training, or going off the rails like it tends to in the field, is simply too high."

Sam can feel that fragile bubble of hope in his chest (of getting Wash back, of things going back to something resembling how they were before) disperse like morning fog at the pronouncement. He didn't expect anything (he never does, not once, not ever) but that—hurts. Caboose next to him and Simmons on the other end of their little group both slump in disappointment but Grif turns to look at him, inscrutable behind his visor.

"Interestingly enough," Kimball says into the depressive silence, her energy somewhat renewed, "you work well when you fight together, but individually, you still haven't shown what it takes to lead others… Which is why I'm giving you five days."

Finally pulling away from his teammate, Sam straightens at the steel in her tone, and the others seem to follow suit.

"Five days to assemble a smaller team—one comprised of the best of each of your platoons. And if you can convince me that you're ready by the end of those five days then you will have my support."

Which, well, that was an entirely different ball-game, wasn't it? And Tucker could keep his clever little quips about it to his damn self. If there's one thing Samuel Nico Ortez can do, it's train rookies.