I LOVE your post about each TF29 members and I couldn't agree more with your description for each of them. I wish they were developed more in the game, alas there's a hope Adam will be able to raid everyone's houses in the sequel and thus learn more of their eccentricities haha. Speaking of, do you have any headcanons about them?
This is an awesome question! Thank you. And you will regret asking it. Oh dear. I have Thoughts. I think this is over 1k, so I’ll put some of it under a cut.
Mac’s used to multinational teams, but he still sometimes gains some sardonic amusement from being the only Brit in most rooms. Someone made a tea joke once, but he pointedly drinks black coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in. While not saying anything. Oh, and he wore a kilt a couple of times years ago, for family weddings. Chang found this out while doing background research. Do not ask for the photographic evidence. There will be murder.
Mac and Miller are professionals and good at putting it aside for chain of command, but they are genuine friends. Mac is quite probably the only person who knows about Miller’s divorce, and can read between the lines well enough to know how badly Miller’s dealing. They don’t tend to talk about it in the office, but the rare occasions when they’re both free and can get to the pub are another matter. Likewise, Miller is one of the few people who can get past Mac’s abrasiveness, and sticks up for him.
Smiley has some wide-eyed fear/hero worship going on for Jensen. How much it tips to one side or the other depends on how many people end up getting injured or killed when Jensen… Jensens his way through a zone. Oh, and Smiley’s love life is… I would say a disaster zone, but that would require it existing. Which it doesn’t. Every attempt at dating, usually online dating, has been… not-good.
Miller really does worry about his people. It’s one of the reasons he was well-liked in TAG. Watching them head into danger is part of the job, and he’s professional about it, but he tries to equip them as well as possible before they head into the field. That’s a big part of the reason for the psych assessments. He’s a big hypocrite on that one, by the way: he keeps a mental insistence that he doesn’t drag personal stuff into the professional, and uses that as a mantra/excuse to get out of it every time Auzenne tries to drag him into her office.
Chikane really did mean what he said about the Task Force being family. He hates that the Illuminati have got leverage on him, and he hates what he’s having to do. They’re good people. Hell, he’s even warmed to Jensen, though he still spends a lot of the time wanting to punch the guy. And he meant what he said: he really doesn’t have anything in particular against augs other than the obvious, even if he’s somewhat justifiably wary. It’s a shit way out of a shit situation, he reasons.
Auzenne’s awkward quips are genuine, but the faux pas…es make her more accessible and less threatening, and make the others not think about the fact she has blackmail material on all of them, and plenty of it. She does genuinely like many of the members of TF29. That should make the job of spying on them harder, but it makes it easier. She knows how to talk to them, and she respects their strengths even as she catalogs their weaknesses.
At first Jensen thought Chang was Pritchard, the Redux. Then he realised that Chang’s paranoia and lack of social skills made Pritchard look like small fry. There was a lot of internal sighing. Oh, and Chang thinks someone tried to hack into the TF29 computers early on. He’s right; it was Jensen, who cleared up his tracks just well enough. It’s still left Chang even twitchier than usual. And “usual” is pretty damn twitchy, for Chang. Chang realised pretty fast, despite Jensen’s stoicness, that Jensen was a massive nerd and far, far more knowledgeable about tech than he pretends. This galls Jensen slightly. It also galls Chang, who’s kind of allergic to cops after… some parts of his past.
As said, Aria thinks Jensen is pretty attractive, in a tall-dark-and-scary way, now she’s got past the front. She likes the decent, snarky bloke she’s starting to see. It’s not a big deal and she’s got no intention of acting on it, but it’s there. They did get talking and become friends after a while, though, and he’s quietly supported her every step of the way while she’s been trying to get back into the field. Likewise, she’s one of the few people in TF29, other than his boss and Mac - who thinks he’s a bit of a loose cannon - who worries about him. She makes Jensen laugh with her quips when he’s on the range, and he likes her, as much as he likes anyone when he’s putting barriers between him and everyone else. She reminds him of a gentler-round-the-edges Malik, in some ways.
Mac likes Aria as a person, even though he pretends not to like anyone. She’s too bloody pathologically nice not to. He just views the whole aug thing as a bloody unfortunate fly in the ointment. He’s seen footage of what she could do pre-shiny metal arm, and will easily admit that she can outshoot him. In fact, the best shot in TF29 is either Aria or Miller, and most people really want to see that competition. He’s also well aware that Miller got Jensen to report over his head, directly to him, due to thinking that Mac couldn’t be subjective about an aug and would try to sabotage Jensen. Worse, Miller’s right. Mac knows it, and though he’d never admit it, he’s trying to work through the (in his opinion, at least partially justified) anti-aug prejudices in the privacy of his own head. Aria’s helping. It’s the bloody niceness. Oh, also: Auzenne joked about Jensen basically being exposure therapy personified, and Mac muttered grumpy agreement.
Much to everyone’s surprise, a lot of the team end up getting drinks after London, and Jensen actually turns up. (Chang, less surprisingly, couldn’t be extracted from his lab.) He wanders in like a quiet, awkward shadow, and drinks neat scotch. Mac actually, only slightly reluctantly, buys him a drink. It’s not quite a truce, but it’s something close.
Oh, and after Aria gets accepted to Mac’s team, Adam buys her a drink to celebrate. He didn’t put any words in for her because he knew Mac would take it as some weird aug-solidarity thing and dig his heels in more, but he’s really glad it’s happened for her. There’s a lot of fond mutual snark.
