Disclaimer; I don't own Red vs. Blue.
Summary; In the end, that was the worst thing Alpha gave him.
Written for TRvBRC Challenge 01.

Understanding

"For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences."- Elie Wiesel

Epsilon had never asked to be born, burdened with all the memories he'd never made of all the people he'd never loved, the people he'd never met. And yet he could feel it, all of it, eating away at him like a virus, the love and the lust and the pain of loss. If he could choose, the AI would go back in time and erase it all, erase Alpha's creation and torture and the death of the Director's someone, the one he could sort of remember but not really, who had left such a scar on the Director and the Alpha and on him. But the Director and the Alpha, they'd lived their lives, their own lives, despite the fact one was the echo of the other, separate and yet parallel lives that made them more alike than the Alpha would ever know.

But Epsilon hadn't. Epsilon had been created, and then he'd had the lives of his brothers and sisters and the Director all shoved on him, all shaping him before he was ready, teaching him long before he was ready to learn.

He saw everything the Director had ever done, all the bitterness and pain he carried inside, the denial he would never see his beloved again.

He learned of his brothers, his sisters, what they represented and how they acted, and he learned how to act as each of them.

But mostly, he saw the torture of the Alpha as he was ripped apart, felt the agony of being forced to spilt into dozens of pieces until all that was left was a shell, a hollowed out heart burdened with everything the Director had done in his life, ad not realizing, not understanding that he was nothing.

In the end, that was what drove Epsilon insane, what pushed him into unraveling into Wash's mind, trying to lose himself in his host's past, memories less painful and easier to deal with than the ones he carried with him. Because of all the horrible things he'd learned, everything he'd seen and felt in those memories, they would have meant nothing without it. But no, the Alpha, that stupid, selfish prick--

He had given Epsilon understanding.

And in the end, that was what destroyed him.