"Hmm. Aggressive, paranoid, and a little melodramatic. You must be Agent Washington."

Wash is a great example of how much someone can change the more awful, awful shit happens to him.

A long time ago, Wash was part of Project Freelancer and seemed completely out of place in the company of hardened soldiers and spec ops agents. Naive, overly trusting, and the butt of everyone's jokes, he was nonetheless well-liked and treated sort of like the little brother of the group. He always considered himself the weakest soldier out of everyone there, but somehow still managed to remain hardworking, dedicated, and loyal almost to a fault. He didn't see the other agents as his comrades, but his friends, and the Director was a man he looked up to immensely as someone who'd given them all a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference. Wash was always dismissive about some of the rumors and gossip that went around, about the idea that the Project might be hiding some terrible secrets under the surface, but, well. One day he didn't have the truth so much revealed to him, as he did have it shoved down his throat for him to choke on.

Epsilon was a combat-assistant AI that was assigned to Wash at some point in the project -- except Epsilon turned out to be just a fragment of an original AI. The Alpha AI was apparently subjected to constant, excruciating torture, forced to fragment itself in a desperate attempt to maintain sanity. This particular fragment just happened to be the result of the Alpha shedding itself of every memory of every awful trauma that it had been subjected to, trying to forget in order to keep itself together. Epsilon didn't grow slowly, steadily, insane, it was created insane, and went on to literally commit suicide while implanted in Wash's mind. Imagine someone practically sharing your consciousness, and that someone happened to be going completely mad. You can't help but listen to it, your thoughts mixing together until you can't tell which voice is your own and which is the AI and which are the awful echoing memories of screams and screams, can't help but let yourself get pulled down along with it as it tears itself apart, and. Well. The AI was eventually removed from him, thank god, and Wash was eventually designated Unfit for Duty due to the program's concerns about the long-lasting effects that the incident might have had on his mental stability..

He got better, though. At least, that's what he'll tell you.

The person that Wash became after that was cold and calculating, distant and ruthless with a penchant for paranoia. Burdened with the knowledge of all that the Director had done to him and the people he still thought of as his friends, Wash became consumed with the idea of revenge. Still haunted by the memories of everything he'd endured, Wash tended to lash out at everything and anything around him, and he only learned to loosen up ever so slightly when he was forced to endure the company of some less-than-competent soldiers. People around him had the odd tendency to tell him he was crazy or insane, and Wash was always very, very quick to correct them, perhaps a little forcefully -- no, he's perfectly completely sane, thank you very much, still completely in control.

Loyalty is a sore spot for Wash -- when someone betrayed his trust, he didn't hesitate to shoot them point blank in the face the next time they met. He eventually got his revenge against the Director in a way, but as vengeance is wont to do, it didn't actually really solve anything, and his frustration and anger at all the horrible things he'd been through drove him to betray the Reds and Blues. Ultimately, he finds himself on their side again, and their willingness to embrace him back among their ranks even after he turned his back on them catches him by surprise. That simple act of kindness, whether genuine or not, slowly sets Wash on the road to some much needed self-healing. While the role he ends up playing with the Blues is fairly complex, he ends up caring for them deeply, and he's willing to do anything to keep his new friends safe.

Wash is still a hardened military operative, and this makes up the core of who he is -- when you're in the army, when you're in the army special ops, and especially when you're in the army super-top-secret-special-ops-unit-which-pushes-the-boundaries-of-war-ethics, being a soldier is something that becomes part of who you are. He takes war, violence and fighting in his stride, and in fact feels very at home on a battlefield. Years of training have taught him to be ruthless and deadly, alone or in a squad, and while he was never the best of Freelancer's operatives, he's still capable of taking out an enemy squadron by himself without breaking a sweat, maybe even a missile-launching helicopter or two. The military is probably the source of his tendency towards efficiency, organization and protocol, but he's learned to lighten up a little on that -- mostly out of necessity, since trying to hold the Blues to the standards of an actual military squad is enough to drive anyone up the wall. On the other hand, his practice with trying to teach them anything at all has made him a surprisingly effective teacher, in the right circumstances.

He's learned to curb his aggression somewhat among his own men, but he's still the kind of guy who yells when he gets frustrated ( something that happens a lot when you're with the Reds and Blues ) and is maybe too quick to jump to pulling a gun on someone as a viable solution to a problem. He's not as emotionally distant as he used to be, though he still keeps most people at arm's length, but he is however still pretty emotionally crippled in that he tends to find himself at a loss when it comes to talking about things or really any social situation that demands something out of him other than the capacity to obey or give orders as required. His interactions with people sometimes come across as stiff, and otherwise mostly defined by cynicism and a very, very dry sense of sarcasm that some might find off-putting.

After everything that's happened, Wash is never going to be the same happy and naive little kid that he used to be. He'll always be haunted by the memories of the Project and the memories of even his own actions, but he is finally starting to grow and learn from the past instead of struggle with it and refuse to let any of it go. He is at his core driven by the desire to try and do some right after all the wrong he's experienced and all the wrong he's done, and for someone who went through as much shit as he did, he's still managed to come out the other end as someone who is, so far, a pretty decent guy. Just a little bit messed up.

Or a whole lot messed up. Depending on who you ask.

✓ Literally an experimental spec-ops supersoldier.
✓ Highly trained with just about any firearm, specializing in battle rifles.
✓ Also very proficient with close-range combat, especially proficient at knife-fighting.
✓ Capable leader with military expertise and good tactical instincts. He's also a pretty good team dad.
✓ Resourceful and adaptable, not easily caught off guard.
✓ Extremely driven and determined in pursuit of his goals and will let literally nothing stop him from achieving them.
✓ He's somewhat eased up with his trust issues over time, and can be surprisingly open and genuine.

✕ Ultimately still overly cautious and slow to trust, tending to come across as distant.
✕ Still doesn't really have any idea how to interact with regular people.
✕ Has severe doubts about his own sanity. He's more or less stable now, but one doesn't ever fully recover from going even temporarily insane.
✕ Same with his PTSD. He's in a better place, but he's hardly fully recovered and he's still haunted by everything he's been through and everything he's done.
✕ Tends to be impatient in the face of incompetence. It's gotten better over time out of necessity, but it's still a problem.
✕ Has a very, very hard time letting go of things and is prone to revenge quests.
✕ Protective of the people he cares about to the point of it being easily exploitable by anyone who has a mind to.
✕ Driven by his guilt and constantly trying to make up for things he will either never be able to make up for, or weren't his fault in the first place.

Pretty much anything that would make Wash superhuman derives from his powered assault armor, and since that won't be a factor here there's no need to depower him. Without the armor he's just a soldier. A very effective and very well-trained spec-ops soldier, but still very much human.

No real preference as to which side, Wash is more than adaptable enough to get along wherever he ends up, but I would strongly prefer for him to be on the same side as any other RvB castmates that show up, if possible.

Wash has some fun experiences in canon with being dropped into a war that has absolutely nothing to do with him. Initially he seemed to mostly be concerned with staying out of it and trying to take care of his own, but Wash cares a lot more than he lets on and he ends up sympathizing with the people who'd taken him in. It's not that simple, though, because that entire war kind of turned out to be a bit of a farce, but he did end up still trying to help the people of Chorus to the best of his ability.

He'll likely take a similar approach on arrival to Barrayar. He's still wary and slow to trust, and initially reluctant to get himself involved in a conflict that doesn’t involve him -- he'll agree to play along while intending to stay out of it and not get invested, but he inevitably will. After his experience on Chorus, he's probably not going to get too wrapped up in the idea of any one side being right without knowing more about both sides of the story. Whatever side Wash ends up on, he's likely to try and seek out others like him who were sort of dropped into the conflict rather than being native to it, and try and work with them.