Leonard L. Church/Agent Texas

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Pairing
Pairing: Leonard L. Church/Agent Texas; Epsilon-Church/Epsilon-Tex
Alternative name(s): Chex, Alpha/Beta, Epsilon-Church/Epsilon-Tex
Gender category: M/F
Fandom: Red vs. Blue
Canonical?: Yes
Prevalence: Common
Archives:
Other:
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Spoiler Warning: This article or section may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.

Leonard L. Church/Agent Texas is a het pairing of Leonard L. Church and Agent Texas from Red vs. Blue, not to be confused with Allison/Dr. Leonard Church (The Director). This page also includes the pairing of Epsilon-Church and Epsilon-Texas.

Canon

The story opens with Leonard L. Church leading the Blue Team against their enemies, the Red Team, in a pointless turf war out in the boonies of a desolate box canyon called Blood Gulch. Eventually, Church's ex-girlfriend, Tex, becomes involved in the conflict as a competent hired mercenary. According to Church, they wanted to get married before he was shipped out, though she also cheated on him and stole his money, leading to a cantankerous on-and-off relationship. Tex's behavior seemingly corroborates this summary of her character, evident in her aggressive physical and verbal treatment of the Blood Gulch inhabitants. Church and Tex are both killed by friendly fire a few times, and yet as ghosts they have the mysterious ability to possess their dead bodies and return to the living. During this time, Tex and Church have romantic tension and enjoy a few sweet moments.

The silly antics in Blood Gulch come to an end, revealing the darker truth of Church and Tex.

Brilliant scientist Dr. Leonard Church, also known as the Director, flash-cloned his own brain to create an artificial intelligence, the Alpha, meant to manage various tasks and technologies for the elite soldiers fighting against a hostile alien race. At its genesis, the Alpha spontaneously generated another AI, Beta, created from the memories of Dr. Church's late wife, Allison. Observing this unexpected development born of his own unresolved grief for his lost love, the Director was inspired to subject the Alpha to extreme psychological torture, such that the AI's consciousness would repeatedly fragment into additional AI subjects for further experimentation.

The Freelancer known as Agent Texas eventually discovered that she was Beta and not a human as she had assumed, and that the Director had been subjecting Alpha to inhumane experiments. When Tex attempted to rescue the Alpha, she found that he'd been psychologically damaged to the point that he could no longer remember her, and didn't have the will to escape.

The sociopathic AI fragment Sigma corrupted the Freelancer Agent Maine, and the two began to act as a single being known as the Meta, carving a path of destruction in its single-minded pursuit to assimilate the AI fragments into a whole. Tex fled the Freelancers, while the Director reprogrammed and disguised the Alpha as the unremarkable armored simulation trooper known as Leonard L. Church, serving in the boring outpost of Blood Gulch. When the bumbling troopers of Blood Gulch transmitted a distress signal in the course of their squabbling, Tex found them, and was able to reunite with the amnesiac Church for a time.

Eventually Project Freelancer and the Meta catch up to Blood Gulch. In the ensuing attacks, Tex is captured, and she and Church are both deleted in an EMP detonated as a suicide attack. Only the Alpha's fragmented memory core survives, embodied in the AI Epsilon.

Epsilon

Being the Alpha's memory core, Epsilon is essentially a copy of its consciousness. Naturally, this means that Epsilon-Church does what a Church would do, which is create a Tex. Epsilon-Tex continues to try to battle the Meta and protect Epsilon-Church. They find themselves locked inside a memory unit, where Church recreates Blood Gulch, and they spend more time together. In this cycle of recursion, Epsilon-Church eventually comes to admit he is recursively creating his dead love and forcing her to fight his battles. As their constructed reality begins falling apart, Epsilon-Church frees her from her endless doom, and deletes her.

Comments

One of the most-discussed questions about Alpha Church over the years is whether he truly believed he would survive the EMP right up until the end, and if he did believe Wash, then why did he decide to stay anyway, knowing the EMP would destroy him? And I think there’s an answer that goes beyond anything Wash might’ve said to persuade him, beyond any noble sense of sacrifice Church may or may not have had.

Because really, other than being left the hell alone, Church only actively wants one thing by season 6. One thing that makes him wander off at Valhalla, provoking Wash’s ire.

Church wants to see Tex one more time.

He sees her ship crashed at Valhalla. He asks Wash, “She should be here… right?” He searches the base. She’s not there.

He knows the Meta passed through Valhalla.

Sooner or later, he must put two and two together.

If he and Tex are ghosts, then he’ll survive the EMP and lose nothing but time and any remaining patience he had with Wash. But if it’s true, and they are AIs?

Then the Meta has Tex. And the minute Church realizes that, the minute he accepts that as even a possibility, I think that eliminates any chance of him walking away.

He needs to know. Even if it’s the end for both of them. He needs to see her one last time.[1]

Popular fanon and tropes

  • Angst: being separated or letting each other go as an act of love comes up often in fan works.
  • Dominant woman: Tex is depicted as a one-woman army in canon who is a way better fighter than Church, not to mention physically stronger and seemingly more take-charge. Fic and fanart tends to run with the stronger woman/weaker man dynamic.
  • Fix-it

Fan works

Meta

Fan art

Fan fic

Archives and Communities

Notes

References

  1. ^ https://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/158124237071/one-of-the-most-discussed-questions-about-alpha
Related Concepts, Fandoms, Terms, Fanworks
See also
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