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Winter
Wash wakes up, fatigue fighting with adrenaline. The sun is a hazy yellow halo, covered by clouds, and the rest of the sky couldn’t decide to be grey or blue. The familiar glow of his HUD is not there to comfort him, nor the equally familiar spiderwebbing marks of a broken visor. Only the targeting reticle of his contacts remains, and even that’s struggling to stay online. His vision is still a little dark at the edges and the shadows are taking their sweet time retreating; he works to figure out what he’s looking at. His gaze flickers to the left. He recognizes the shape of a hand lying in the snow, gauntlet and glove removed and looking small in its brokenness, flesh caked and oozing with bright red blood. It takes a second for him to internalize that that’s his own hand. It takes about another second for him to register that someone is holding on.
Adrenaline wins that battle. He attempts to pulls away as everything clicks with a sharp focus.
“Holy crap!”
“Doc, watch it!”
And there were the tell-tale sounds of weapons being raised and being readied. Wash looks up. The visors of two of the sim troopers look down at him, tenseness showing through their armour. He looks at the barrels of their weapons blankly, attempted to feel something at the sight, but fatigue wins that battle. His gaze flicks to his wrist again; in all honesty he’s more concerned about the contact against his bare flesh than about the sim troopers who have every reason in the world to shoot him then and there.
“Guys, can you put those down? You’ll scare him.”
“We’ll scare him?”
“Then do it for my delicate pacifist’s sensibilities.”
There’s a snort of derision at that. The sim troopers back away by about a foot, but don’t lower their weapons. Wash doesn’t have the energy to fight off the grip on his wrist, no matter how much he wants to. He ignores the sim troopers, and their weapons; the world narrows down to that unwanted contact.
“Hey, Wash. Look at me, huh? Lemme see if you’re okay.”
Don’t touch me, Wash thinks tiredly, and attempts to pull away again.
“Oh, hey, that isn’t a good idea, Wash.” After a moment, Doc does let go; Wash traces the retreating hand up the arm, to Doc’s face. Doc had already removed his helmet, and now raised his hands in the universal “I mean you no harm” gesture, accented by awkwardness probably arising from “don’t scare the trigger-happy Freelancer” sentiments. All that time in the desert, he’d never seen Doc without his helmet. Which was a surprisingly prudent move for Doc; going unarmored while around Wash and the Meta would have been foolish, even by sim trooper standards. As it turns out, Doc had the kind of face that would make age and ethnicity hard to pinpoint; there were no markings or scars or features that jumped out; there was absolutely nothing to keep it in one’s mind. Doc even manages to make his mismatched reticle lenses (and why did a medic need such a thing?) look utterly normal. Wash stared, astounded at how remarkable Doc’s features were in their forgettability.
“Hey Wash,” Doc starts. There was an awkward pause, then Doc asks, “How’re you feeling?” Wash winces. His tone isn’t exasperated, like Wash thought it would be. Instead, it holds something like pity. Wash isn’t sure if that’s worse. He tries to get up, though he doesn’t know why. He can’t see any future from here, other than dying in the snow. Still, he tries.
He’s dizzy immediately; doesn’t even make it all the way to sitting position. The world spins for a while, and when it re-orients itself, Doc is awkwardly supporting his back, trying to lie him down again. It’s now that Wash realizes that most of his armour is gone, and when his fingers fumble at his chest, it’s to the feel of bandages—did Doc actually attempt to save him? Doc is talking to the sim troopers again—arguing about something or other—but it’s all white noise against the fact that Doc is holding onto him. Wash tries to push him away.
“Wash, come on, buddy—“ Calling him buddy? Calling him Wash? He’d kidnapped the man, for god’s sake. When Wash had resigned himself to the fact that he would die by the Meta’s hand, when he dedicated his remaining seconds to make sure he’d take down the Meta with him, he’d figured that he’d leave the world the same way he lived most of it—drowning in spite. The emotion now, if he could grasp it at all, was far too close to shame. “Wash, just be still for a minute or you’ll re-open everything I just patched up. You don’t want that, right? Wash, think about this, okay? If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have tossed you the cable, huh?”
That would’ve been the quick way out, Wash thinks immediately, but bites down on saying it just in case he gives Doc ideas. He certainly would’ve had them, had their positions been reversed.
“Wash, you’re really not looking too good.”
“So glad to have your diagnostic expertise.”
“He speaks!” Doc says, and he looks so sincerely happy at that that Wash falters, not understanding why.
“What are you doing?” he asks instead.
“Saving your scrawny ass, what does it look like?” one of the sim troopers calls out.
“Wash, just lie down for a minute, okay? I’m about 73% sure I got the going-to-kill-you-right-now bleeds, now I just need to patch up the rest, okay?”
Wash has a comeback to that, sharp at the tip of his tongue, but self-preservation points out that it’s probably a good idea to quit acting like a hurt animal and actually cooperate on this. 73% was still better than zero.
He gathers what little calm he has and forces himself to lie down in the snow; tries not to jump when Doc attempts, again, to inspect the ruin of tissue and bone that had been his left hand.
“You’re looking pretty stressed out to me, Wash. Are you hurting that bad?”
“No.”
Doc looks like he doesn’t believe him, but Wash ignores him. Dammit. Doc manipulating his hand was the absolute worst thing ever, of all time. It wasn’t about the pain - Wash’s pain net was set high; had to be, to have lasted this long. Pain was present, but not the problem.
Just…
Wash had been in and out of Freelancer medic bays and Recovery and all that; just a cog in the machine, needing to be fixed. And, if too much trouble to be fixed, replaced.
It was different, with Doc. He had an odd gentleness to him, though he went about his work as efficiently as his questionable capabilities allowed him. The gentleness was as unexpected as his help. It made Wash’s skin crawl. Doc mutters things about breaks and dislocations and orange juice, but Wash is desperately trying not to pay attention, trying to distract himself so that he won’t punch out Doc. It’s hard when with each poke and prod he’s expecting Doc to dislocate his shoulder. They had called each other family at one point or another, but towards the end of it, the Freelancers had torn each other apart quite literally. How could he expect someone he had wronged to act any differently?
Everything up to now had taught him a few simple, harsh truths, one of which was this: touch, no matter how gentle, is always a warning, a prelude to pain. Contact was meant for inflicting agony. The mounting anticipation of this inevitability was becoming so unbearable that Wash almost wished that Doc would just snap his wrist already. Doc treating his hand was the absolute worst thing ever, of all time.
The sim troopers are starting to argue; they’re saying things about how “that’s the idea of the year” and “blue team problems,” but Wash just doesn’t have the energy to care about his judges, juries, and executioners. He meant what he said before. He’s done.
Doc, unfortunately, seems to choose now of all times to pick up some intuition. Doc seems to glance at him. Wash stubbornly refuses to look. “You really aren’t used to people helping you, huh?” Doc asks.
“What?”
“Getting help without having to threaten or bargain; getting help just ‘cuz you need it. I guess it’s a new thing?”
He really doesn’t have anything to say to that. Doc continues his work when it becomes evident, even to him, that Wash isn’t going to answer.
“Okay,” Doc said cheerfully, pinning together the wrappings around his hand. “Time for the other one.”
Wash amended his earlier statement. Doc treating his other hand was the absolute worst thing ever, of all time.
Spring
The sim troopers don’t kill him, nor do they leave him to rot in jail; they take him home - home being a random place in a canyon in the middle of a forest in the middle of the universe that the sim troopers decided, “Yep, this’ll do,” and proceeded to set up bases.
Wash doesn’t understand why, when they had nothing to gain and could very well lose their freedoms if the switch was found out. Wash doesn’t understand why, when not even those he had thought of as friends came back for him.
Their kindness was the first of many surprises. The way Caboose would call him Church; Sarge’s repeated attempts to steal Blue team’s flag (soundly rebuffed, though Wash has to admit that he’s never had to think so…creatively before in his life, all to counteract Sarge’s schemes); the fact that it takes him a few weeks to realize that Tucker and Caboose unofficially elected him to be Blue Team leader…
How talkative everyone is. He knows more about the Reds and Blues over a span of a few weeks than he ever knew about the Freelancers whom he had been with for years. He can recite the names of Sarge’s grandkids (Andromeda; Asterion; Cygnus; Orion; Hesperus; Phil); knew that Tucker had a son (the surprise wasn’t that said son was Sangheili; it was that Tucker had reproduced at all); knew the score of Grif’s most successful kitchen infiltration (ten cakes, and even Grif had to admit that that was terrible); knew about Simmons’ various hang-ups growing up (and let that be said with no further comment), and had heard about the questionable fates of Caboose’s many pets (“and then Tucker said Mr. Frittles had to go to the farm!”).
In Freelancer, there was the immediate and unspoken understanding that pasts were off-limits. Even those that knew one another before getting involved in Freelancer addressed one another by their call-signs; after all these years, Wash doesn’t know what his former teammates’ actual names were. And that was another sin he could lay at the feet of Freelancer.
They took away our names, and gave us little black boxes. It was one of the many thoughts that kept him warm when everything else was ice. Anger protected him when nothing and no one else would.
“So where are you from, Wash?” Tucker says one day, turning away from the scope of his DMR. They’re in full armour like this recon ‘mission’ means something, and they’re watching the Reds watching them, like a twisted blinking game. It was inevitable that one of them would want to break the silence.
“What did you say?”
“Before you became all scary Freelancer. Where’d they get you from?”
A bad situation, Wash thinks, but doesn’t say. They gave me a second chance; I was so grateful I gave them everything. But even after that was gone, they still wanted more. There’s that uneasy feeling again, deep inside. The Reds and Blues also gave him a second chance, even after all he had done, and though Wash was grateful in a way he never thought he’d be again, he’s still wary about not knowing what the price is.
Tucker is still faced towards him, and behind his visor he seems to roll his eyes at his silence. “Okay, look, I’ll start. I’m from Detroit, born and raised. Would’ve started engineering at uni but then I got stuck in the universe’s suckiest real estate and got caught up in prophecy stuff. Then Freelancer problems started.” He turns his attention to the DMR scope again. “Before that, family came from the Virgin Islands. Grandparents’d make trips back there, sometimes, and when they got back they’d say that now they’re just called the Islands. Bow-chika-bow-wow.”
Wash doesn’t answer immediately. He’s wondering if Tucker crafted that backstory for the sake of his go-to punchline, or if the “bow-chika-bow-wow” was actually something his grandparents had said upon their return.
“So, your turn,” Tucker says, turning his attention back to the Reds. Grif and Simmons seemed to be arguing about something, but that wasn’t anything new. Even Wash could tell that they bickered so much it must’ve been love.
“I don’t remember agreeing to this,” Wash answers.
Tucker doesn’t turn away from his scope. In the distance, Grif makes a rude gesture that Tucker promptly returns, and Wash deflates a little. The thing with Tucker was that he was so lenient about his boundaries that Wash automatically found himself backing off on his own.
“Leonis Minor,” Wash says, and falls silent. That’s where it all started, really. There had been five of them, colony children of colony children, squabbling in a mixture of Mandarin and Japanese that had been the languages of home. Their mother taught them how to shoot and how to fight, but despaired over how much they fought with one another. Their father was only a collection of memories by the time David was school-aged, and now, David was just scraps of memories, too; maybe he was even less. There was no one left who would remember David, let alone someone who could still find a shade of him in the creature he had become. All of those people were in the past, and that was where they belonged.
David belonged there, too.
Because was there any use for roots when the tree was burned to ashes?
Tucker turns to look at him, head tilted to the side, and his ensuing tone was somewhere between perplexed and amused.
“I’m practically spelling out to you my origin story,” he says. “And that’s all you have to say about yours? That’s totally unfair.”
Even though Tucker’s tone was joking, that sick and twisted feeling rears its ugly head. Something inside snaps. “Tucker, I don’t know what you want from me.”
Tucker blinks. “Wow, Wash, if you don’t wanna say, you don’t wanna say, there’s no need to be so intense and dramatic about it—“
“No, as in I don’t know what you want from me.”
“What?”
Emotions are moving quickly, and they tangle his words. Tucker’s body language gives off a “what the heck is wrong with this guy?” vibe as Wash gives a brief flail then says, “I know how these things are supposed to work, Tucker. Fair is fair. You guys saved me from death or worse—“
“What’s worse than—“
“But you do know that I don’t have anything to give you in return, right?” He’s yelling now, voice cracking in frustration. There was a price for this, for their company, their warmth. That was how it worked in Freelancer, in the end; everyone had their specialty, their place, their ticket up the leaderboard. They could work together, just as long as their places weren’t threatened. That was the price of team, of companionship, of family.
What was the price now, and how could Wash ever hope to meet it, when he was so…so…the way he was? The way he had been for years upon years, ever since he’d been left behind, left alone. He expects Tucker to laugh in his face. He expects bargaining and coercion under words as sweet as poison. He expects to be used and thrown away, yet again.
Everything up to now had taught him a few simple, harsh truths, one of which was this: kindness does not come freely.
His body braces for pain, but the bite does not come. “Hold up,” Tucker says. “You’re telling me…that you don’t understand…why we’re not taking advantage of the fact you ‘owe’ us?”
This response blindsides Wash, and his tone changes to a quiet bafflement. “Well, why aren’t you? Everyone else has. Isn’t - isn’t that just how these things work?”
Tucker takes off his helmet, to better openly stare at Wash. Little stars wink in and out of his dark eyes, a display that had nothing to do with lenses and everything to do with the Sangeili, and behind his visor Wash tries not to stare. “Wash,” Tucker says, his brows furrowed in deep confusion. “I know you’re, like, all scary super soldier shit, but you can’t tell me that this whole ‘people helping you ‘cuz you need help even though you’re a grade-a asshole’ is a new, never-before experienced thing, or that it happened so long ago you don’t remember it.”
Wash doesn’t have an answer to that. Tucker’s eyes search the surface of Wash’s visor, as though trying to find him. Wash feels himself try to hide inside his own lenses. The silence is a canyon between them. “Dude,” Tucker says finally. “That’s messed up on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin.”
Wash blinked, unable to come up with a response. Was this really as bad as Tucker was making it out to be? Under Tucker’s flustered gaze, Wash starts to wonder if his simple truths were really simple at all.
Summer
One morning, Wash pulled out new lenses from the Blues’ meagre stock pile of equipment. His yellow targeting lenses never fully recovered from the pummelling he’d gotten from the Meta, and a few days ago they gave out entirely. Wash went into a little bit of denial before deciding that it was time to change them. He should’ve tossed the useless things, but he held onto them, still, in their little beaten-up case. Once upon a time, they had been given to him by Maine.
Wash goes into their little “recreation room” (i.e. there’s something that functions as a couch here) and opens the box that he had pulled at random. The lenses inside are pale blue, a shade lighter than the cobalt he now wore. After a moment’s hesitation he places in one, and then the other, and blinks the lenses, eventually, into their proper place. There’s a tiny buzzing sound as they sync with the battle rifle at his back and the magnum at his side.
As the lens finish their syncing, for a moment, Wash’s vision abruptly becomes a sea of deep blue.
He gives an indignant squeak, takes a couple of steps back, and draws out his battle rifle.
“I am here!” The blue takes shape, and before him stands Caboose, dressed casually in worn out jeans, navy t-shirt, and striped pink toe socks, one of the toes flat from where Caboose was missing a digit. The only thing of Caboose’s equipment are the deep blue targeting lenses in his eyes that are a match to the sapphires he wore in both ears, left nostril and left lower lip.
“Caboose!” Wash yells, more worried than annoyed. For a human behemoth Caboose could move surprisingly quietly, but only when he wasn’t trying to be stealthy. “I could’ve shot you!”
“Well that wouldn’t have been very nice, Agent Washington,” Caboose says, like he was gently scolding a pet.
“Not on purpose,” Washington sighs.
“Oh, okay!” Caboose says, perking back up again. Caboose knew all about accidental team-kills.
Caboose’s size and the strength that was associated with it showed up prominently in the calculations that ran in Wash’s head, the calculations that were his near-constant state of threat assessment. Wash, standing at medium height and build, is a good foot-and-a-half shorter than Caboose even with his armour on, and he is very cognizant of how badly things could go for him if Caboose got angry and they were in a small, enclosed space, like they were in now.
Not that this makes him scared of Caboose per se. Wash is used to beating people bigger than him, mostly by being meaner than them, so Caboose’s strength hasn’t been something so imminently threatening that he feels the need to do something about it. There’s something lurking behind Caboose’s cheerful demeanour, the calculations scream, but at least Wash can tell that something isn’t aimed at him.
And besides…Caboose has his own kindnesses. More often than not, Wash finds himself telling the calculations to piss off.
Caboose is still standing before him, rocking on his heels. “Agent Washington?”
“Yes, Caboose?”
“You look really pretty with those lenses.”
“Thank-you, Caboose,” Wash says. Caboose loved anything blue. But Caboose continues to stand there, so Wash asks, “Is there anything you need, Caboose?”
“Agent Washington, I want to give you a hug.”
“Well, buddy,” Wash begins patiently, his mind automatically formulating a “no” as soon as Caboose said “I want.”” “I don’t think that—“ Wait, what did Caboose say? “Wait, what?”
“A hug,” Caboose repeats. “I will give one to you.”
The thoughts in Wash’s head stall for half a second, and in that half-second Wash responds with a slightly confused, “Okay.”
Before Wash could think about this any more, Caboose is already—surprisingly gently— kind of…surrounding him, and he can feel Caboose press his cheek against the top of his head. This was slightly alarming, and Wash could feel the adrenaline surge, and he tries not to think of the fate of poor Mr. Frittles. There are a lot of thoughts flying through Wash’s head, but the one that he catches onto is this: Caboose must be rather uncomfortable, only in casual wear and embracing someone clad shoulders-down in armour. But if Caboose is uncomfortable, he doesn’t show it. Arms were wrapped around Wash’s chest plates, and he could feel the pressure transmitting through it, snugly around his ribs, and Caboose is resting his hands at his back, pushing Wash closer. He hunkers down so that his chin rests on top of Wash’s head. Terror peaks, then tapers, then burns itself out. After a moment, Wash has to admit that it’s warm in here, approaching to something that might’ve been comfort, if Wash could only remember what comfort was.
But, of course, Wash needs to halt that train of thought immediately. “What’s this for, Caboose?” he asks instead. He expects Caboose to answer with, just ‘cuz, or something equally vague, but what he says throws Wash for a loop. He says—
“You looked like you needed it.”
Wash doesn’t know where Caboose got the idea. Yeah, there were the bone-crushing grips you gave to teammates after a particularly harsh mission, but casual hugs didn’t mean much to Wash anymore, least of all as gestures of affection; not when Wash learned that the universe was so dangerous that even light touch was almost always a prelude to pain. And, anyways, if you couldn’t trust anyone to be at your back, why would you ever trust them to be so close to you? Close enough to touch you is leagues upon leagues close enough to kill you. Still, he could tell what Caboose was attempting, so he decides to go along with this; even tolerates Caboose’s patting of his head with as much dignity as he could muster. He certainly did not need—
Suddenly, his eyes are stinging, and he doesn’t know why. Then Wash feels something catch in his throat and, to his horror, finds himself turning into Caboose’s chest to keep that something inside from tearing its way out. The gears in his mind pick up on his panic, and begin to spin furiously, offering up ways of escape. He dismisses them all on the basis of this is a goddamned hug and instead redirects his focus on how to hug back. It’s embarrassing just how long it takes for him to figure out that part. He tries to maneuver his arms in what he thinks is reciprocation, and he takes Caboose’s hum of contentment to be a sign that he isn’t too far off the mark.
It hits Wash clearly then: Mr. Weapon, Mr. Survivor, Mr. Soldier, Mr. Done-With-The-World, was nothing more than a broken thing. A broken thing that only understood how to break others in its quest to feel something whole. Panic blooms inside him when he feels the edges of his own fragments.
Everything up until this point has taught him a few simple, harsh truths, one of which was this: to be broken was to be weak; to be weak was to fall apart; to fall apart was to die.
But the seconds tick by. Nothing bad happens. Nothing bad continues to happen. The threat assessment in Wash’s head doesn’t know what to do with this information. He lets out a shaky breath, and hopes Caboose doesn’t notice.
“Are you okay, Agent Washington?”
“I’m okay, Caboose.”
It wasn’t fully a lie.
Fall
Autumn seemed to fall overnight. “Too much red,” Caboose had said crossly, before point-blank refusing to come outside. Then Tucker pulled the “if he doesn’t have to go out for laps, then I don’t” card, and Wash kind of just threw up his hands at that point. He’d let this go, for now. Wash thinks he might have to resort to making leaf-piles for Caboose to jump in just so Caboose would get some fresh air once in a while.
But for today he figures he ought to take this opportunity to let Caboose and Tucker be each other’s punishment for getting out of training. Blue base probably would still be standing by the time he got back. So Wash makes his way out of their base, walks until it's is just a miniature at the bottom of a valley, and sits and rests against a tree. The trees surrounding their forgotten corner of the universe bursts with fall’s colours.
Wash sighs, and, idly, takes out his knife. Carefully, he carves “猴王” into his battle rifle with the knife tip. Hóuwáng, one of the titles of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. Wash remembers that much from his mother’s stories, though he never understood why those characters were found on all standard issue BR55s, opposite the charging handle. Carving those characters into the battle rifles he used was something he picked up when the BR55s were phased out in favour of newer models that didn’t have that embellishment. It was at a time when he had yet another name. David _______ had been phased out in favour of Agent Washington; Agent Washington had been left in ruin in favour of Recovery One; Recovery One was the trapped, the fool, the left behind. In a pathetic way, these carvings were almost like claiming something as his own.
They took away our names, and gave us little black boxes.
But the scalding heat that usually came with that thought isn’t there. Wash almost blinks in surprise. Maybe, for today at least, the anger has burned itself out. Only a dull, tired ache remains, a sort of grief that Wash doesn’t dare name. Wash finishes his carvings, leans back, the top of his head resting against the tree trunk. Light winks in between the rustling leaves.
Even as he watches, one leaf starts to fall. It’s lightish red, and lands on the ground to slightly overlap a brown leaf that had already been there. Wash stares at the pair. A sick feeling settles in his gut. Anger had been the only thing that kept his fragments together; anger had protected him when nothing and no one else would; but at what cost?
“I never figured you were the kind to be labelling things.” Sarge’s voice, a clean signal through the noise. Wash only flinches a little bit at the sudden interruption, and if Sarge notices, he doesn’t say anything. Wash looks up, a reprimand sharp on his tongue as Sarge managed to sneak up on him while he’s holding the only two weapons his old teammates had thought him somewhat competent with. “You want one of those new-fangled machines?” Sarge continues, and Wash deflates, knowing the words would be wasted on Sarge. Hell, the Red would have kicked his shiny Blue ass, anyways (not that Wash would admit it). “They print out stickers; probably way easier than this.”
“I prefer this way,” Wash says, and Sarge gives an ambiguous grunt before, uninvited, sitting next to him.
On top of the leaves that Wash had been staring at.
He’s not really sure how he feels about this, but before he can say anything, Sarge reaches over and shakes his shoulder. Wash pries himself out of his grip.
“What was that for?” Wash squeaks. It didn’t hurt, but he was indignant all the same.
“Giving you a reboot,” Sarge says.
“What?”
“A reboot,” Sarge repeats. “Your blue buddies over there forewarned me that you get into a good-ol’ blue screen of death every now and again and get caught in some kind of melodramatic trance. I’m just trying to get at you before you reach that point.”
“Seriously?”
“Works on Simmons,” Sarge shrugs. “Saves him from blatherin’ on about his childhood, and saves me from having to listen. Win-win.”
Did you try it on Lopez, too? Wash thinks; doesn’t know if he has the courage to say the thought aloud. You killed his own, his mind hisses. You deserve to bleed for that.
Sarge is studying him. “Didn’t seem to have worked,” he says. “I could slap you in the face. That’s reboot method #2.”
A dry “no thank-you” is on Wash’s lips, but it kind of comes out as the world’s weariest sigh. Maybe it would’ve been a relief if pain did come. Penitence was paid in blood, after all.
“Yep, definitely didn’t work,” Sarge says, shaking his head sadly. “You know, Wash, it ain’t good to be bottling things up on the inside. All that emotional constipation bungs up the works real fast. If you have something to say, you ought to say it.”
There’s a pause, then, “I killed Donut and Lopez.” Wash watches Sarge’s face; doesn’t really get much but an ambiguous raise of a brow. “Why are you still trying to fix me?”
Everything up to now had taught him a few simple, harsh truths, one of which was this: forgiveness and redemption are nothing more than lies told to small children.
After all I’ve done, how can they be so forgiving?
Sarge looks like he has an immediate answer to that, then pauses. He slowly reaches for the shotgun on his back, his eyes still on Wash’s face. Sarge’s reticle contacts of choice are hot, bright, blood red, and it’s a little disconcerting for Wash to hold his gaze. There’s a spike of terror, and of weariness, an urge to defend himself at extreme measures, but Wash forces himself to ride it out.
Because slowly, agonizingly slowly, his body is recognizing that here, at least, in their makeshift bases, there was no need to wait for pain. Here, at least, his mind is coming to accept that pain is not going to come from the Reds and Blues. If they had wanted him to hurt, they would’ve left his bleeding ass out in the snow or let him rot behind bars. He’d certainly done enough to deserve both.
So he remains utterly still as Sarge, his movements more careful than Wash had ever believed him capable of, unclasps the shotgun at his back, and lays it across his lap. Sarge then begins engraving something into the metal with the tip of his knife, working at an odd angle, like he’s intentionally giving Wash a clear view. Out of a sense of contrariness, Wash’s instinct is to not rise to that bait, but then curiosity gets the better of him. He glances and, though the characters seem strangely familiar, sees a language he doesn’t recognize, and in a graceful script that he hadn’t expected from Sarge.
“We’ve all done things we regret, Wash,” Sarge begins, carefully focused on his engraving. “There are those who fall and never try to pick themselves up, and those that climb their way back, even if it means losing fingernails and various other body parts on the way. You seem to me to be the second kind. And I know my boys as well as I know my trusty shotgun; Donut would’ve said that he was proud of you.”
A lump rises in Wash’s throat; an emotion that he didn’t dare name.
“And I know in these bones that Lopez would have said the exact same thing, only in Spanish.”
Okay, that one Wash highly doubts, but he appreciates the sentiment all the same.
“Besides,” Sarge says, perking up a little. “The way I see it, they’re not dead!”
Wash blinks. “What?”
“Rule #57 of battle, Wash: never believe someone’s dead unless you see a body. And had the body 236% identified. And cremated the remains. And destroyed all remaining DNA samples that can be used for cloning."
"But-"
"And different rules entirely when it comes to robots and-slash-or half-robot-cyborg-types - you'd almost have to chuck 'em in lava to make them stay down. Explains the hell out of Simmons, though Grif sadly continues to defy expectation.”
“Sarge-“
“Look,” Sarge says, evidently coming to the conclusion he’s going to have to spell this out for Wash. “You’re trying to do good. Won’t ever make it hunky-dory that you messed up in a bad way; but you having messed up doesn’t mean you have to continue messing up ’til it kills you. Understand?” And there Sarge goes again, his eyes searching for Wash.
“Not that getting better is ever easy,” Sarge says. “There’ll be bad days when someone’ll just brush by you and you’ll want to shoot them because even that’s too close, and there’ll be days when you’ll fight down someone who’s just trying to make sure you don’t bleed out because your panicking brain thinks that’s the idea of the year. There’ll be days where where you’ll wonder if you can ever fix yourself or the things you’ve done. Some days you wonder just what the catch is; some days you wonder just why you’re here.”
Sarge resumes his carvings, and his tone shifts ever slightly, becomes softer, lighter, gentler, somehow, in a way Wash didn’t think Sarge was capable of. “But those times’ll get shorter,” Sarge continues, “and fewer, and then you’ll find that you can fill your days with something else.”
Sarge finishes with his work, and places the shotgun once again at his back. He raises his hand at slightly above shoulder-height. Wash flinches even though Sarge moved slowly enough that the rational part of Wash could tell he wasn’t planning anything malicious. Sarge stills for a minute, watching his face. Then, slowly, he rests his hand on Wash’s shoulder. Wash takes a deep breath in. Nothing bad happens. Nothing bad continues to happen. Breathing gets easier. He reaches up, covers Sarge’s hand with his own. Maybe he’s trying to convey reciprocation; maybe he’s trying to convey remorse. Wash doesn’t know. What he does know is that Sarge’s hand feels warm, so warm, and Wash realizes belatedly that his own must be freezing. Sarge doesn’t comment on that, though. “Son,” he says, giving him a smile made crooked by an old scar, “it’ll get better.”
Changing of the seasons
Wash wakes up. It’s sunrise, and all shades of red and blue streak across the sky. His heart isn’t hammering in his chest. There are no restrained screams to claw at his throat. There is no feeling of dread or danger. No tendrils of nightmares wrap around his mind. On the table in front of him, his light blue contacts glow softly from their recharging dock, it’s colour comfortingly familiar; something, at last, he could call his own. The odd feeling of peace that Wash feels right now is enough to make him question if he’s really awake at all. His gaze flickers to the left. His attention catches on deep, rich blue, and—is he looking at cyan? teal? aqua? It takes him a second to register what he’s looking at.
Adrenaline wins that battle. He nearly tumbles off the couch, before an arm catches him and pulls him back. There’s a spike of terror with the unexpected contact, but it doesn’t reach as high nor last as long as it had for years upon years. This was Blue base, after all, and Tucker and Caboose weren’t going to hurt him.
Tucker and Caboose are sleeping next to him-sort of. Some time after they’d fallen asleep in the middle of RWBY’s second season, Caboose had evidently decided that Wash would be the perfect stuffed animal and had managed to squish Tucker in between them. Caboose’s arm reaches past Tucker to wrap around Wash’s shoulder; Tucker is currently curled up against Wash’s ribs. Caboose mutters something about Mr. Frittles (and there’s another adrenaline spike), and Tucker is muttering something in broken Sangheili, but other than that, Wash’s near fall didn’t disturb either of them. They soon lapse into silence, and they’re sleeping against him like they have every confidence in the world that he won’t hurt them. Wash doesn’t know what he had done to merit that confidence.
Please, please, he thinks, not knowing who or what he was begging from. Don’t let me hurt them. Contact was meant for inflicting agony.
There’s something warm, here, something almost like comfort, and he doesn’t want to leave, but at the same time he feels such a sense of urgency that he can’t even begin to contemplate staying. Terror for his own safety burned itself out quickly; a new dread takes its place. The calculations in his head, perhaps knowing he would dismiss the various ways Caboose and Tucker could hurt him at this proximity, argue instead that this is a prelude to something terrible, that pain is always the price. This was far too good to last, and breaking others was all that Wash, in all his brokenness, knew how to do.
Everything up to now had taught him a few simple, harsh truths, one of which was this: nothing this good ever happens without being ripped away.
He tries to stand up again without disturbing either of the other Blues, and barely makes it to standing position before an arm snakes around his waist and pulls him back down. He strangles the startled yell in his throat, and it comes out more like some sort of grunt, and his hands are attempting to pull at the restraint before he stops himself. Caboose is making noises Wash had thought only small, sad puppies were capable of, and Tucker’s eyelids are fluttering. Any further attempt at leaving would probably wake them.
I could always tell them it’s time for training, Wash thinks, tiredly, knowing that he’d lost that battle already. He lets himself be eased back down, heart hammering in his chest.
But the seconds tick by. Nothing bad happens. Nothing bad continues to happen. The terror reaches its peak, then tapers, then finally, and agonizingly slowly, burns itself out. Wash can breathe again. Thoughts that he doesn’t dare give voice to come in place of the terror.
Nothing is going to hurt him.
Nothing is going to hurt his team.
Wash isn’t going to hurt his team.
Wash sits there for a while, in this warmth, occupying himself with trying to sync his breathing with either Tucker’s or Caboose’s. Before he knows it, he does return to sleep. The dreams he has are forgotten before he even wakes, but they leave him with a sense of calm that he doesn’t remember ever feeling before.
Who knows. Maybe he dreamt about a few gentle truths, taking root in the ruin.