"Dude? You guys are some cold motherfuckers."
      -- Private Leonard L. Church. Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction, episode six.

Wash is a lot of things, but cold motherfucker is probably a good start.

Wash is 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 cold motherfucker is pretty much what it's about. He takes war, violence and fighting in his stride, and infact feels very at home on a battlefield. Years of training have taught him to be ruthlessly efficient 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. With that kind of a lifestyle, there's very little time to stop and mourn the dead, and very little time to think about the moral consequences of shooting someone in the head. In the end? He doesn't. He does what he has to, and does everything with no regrets.

People around him have a strange, inexplicable habit of calling him crazy -- but he's not, and Washington won't hesitate to tell you this. He gets touchy if you bring it up, and makes it clear that he doesn't like talking about his past experience with AIs or the Project all that much. He's been through a lot of shit in his life, and it's not that he's in denial about it, exactly. He just doesn't like to go there, and seriously, he isn't crazy, stop calling him that.

Of course, it's not just some kind of crazy ( haha ) coincidence that people are reluctant to believe him. It may have been because -- well, it was a long time ago, but he's a Freelancer, right, and they have that AI program. One AI partner per agent, experimental military protocol -- it was supposed to make them faster, stronger, more aggressive, more tactical, over all better soldiers. Wash had one too: the Artificial Intelligence unit Epsilon. But ah, lets just say -- Epsilon wasn't the most stable of the family. More so, he was driven mad by memories of torture -- Epsilon didn't grow slowly, steadily, insane, he was created insane, and went on to literally commit suicide while implanted in Wash's mind.

Imagine, if you will, someone practically sharing your consciousness, and going completely mad. You can't help but listen to it, can't help but watch it, and you're watching it go completely crazy and destroy itself but you can't help but have yourself get pulled down, too, because sometimes you can't tell which thoughts are the AI's and which thoughts are yours- and then you might have a fraction of an idea of why Washington was certified Unfit for Duty due to mental insanity for a good, long time.

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

Despite all of that, Wash pulled off the miracle of being what is, essentially, a good guy. He valued honor, mercy, trust, justice, and especially loyalty, and that probably has a lot to do with how he isn't really that much of a good guy anymore. He's tried too hard for too long to make things right in his screwed up little life, and all along he's always wanted to do nothing but what he felt was right. But for all of his effort, all he's gotten is screwed over. Time and time again, shot in the back by people he was stupid enough to trust, and Wash doesn't take betrayal lightly. Not at all, and if you manage to get on his bad side, Wash isn't the kind of guy to yell every time he sees your face and swear revenge, spraying bullets in your general direction. He's a lot better than that. Wash is exactly the kind of guy, however, to hunt you down, find you at your weakest, and quite calmly put a bullet through your skull.