Agent Washington (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unrecovered) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hfm_logs2015-07-18 12:35 pm
unrecovered) wrote in hfm_logs2015-07-18 12:35 pm
I don't believe it; I had to see it [Closed]
Warnings: Profanity, talk of death, probably some other terrible stuff because guess who just died!
Summary: After getting himself murdered by the Nox, Wash tries to put himself back together. He's gonna need help with this one.
Characters: Wash, Greg
Location: Wash's apartment, the high rises
Time: A day or two after the Nox enter the carnival
It wasn't the first time Wash had woken up exhausted and with no idea how he'd gotten where he was. This time was a little different; usually, whenever this happened, he'd wake up in medical or wherever he was staying, usually because someone had the compassion to drag him out of the line of fire back to someplace where he could recover. This time, he'd woken up in a garden - the garden atop the spire, his memories told him, as the haze slowly started to clear from his mind. But how had he gotten all the way up here? The last thing he remembered-
The shadow infested carnival-
Turning down a deal-
Nox mobbing him from all sides-
Agony and darkness-
He sat up sharply and clutched at his stomach, swallowing down the sudden bout of nausea that had rolled over him.
He'd died.
He'd died.
Then how was he alive? He was back in Freesia - he recognized the garden; he couldn't be anywhere else - but there was no explanation as to how he'd gotten here, how someone - Lux? He didn't know - had put him back together after the Nox had gotten through with him. Would he find a whole host of new scars the next time he took his armor off?
He shivered and swallowed hard as another bout of nausea hit him at the thought. No. Not here. He had to- he had to keep moving. Find someplace safe. Figure out how long he'd been out. He had to go.
It took him two tries to get to his feet, and half an hour to get down the stairs. The nausea had subsided - small favors - but whatever had happened to get him back here had left him exhausted and weak. By the time he reached the bottom, he was shaking almost too hard to stand. Luckily, the high rises were close, even if those would involve more stairs.
As it turned out, those stairs were hell.
He had just enough energy to close the door of his apartment behind him and remove his armor before he collapsed on the couch. Bone-deep exhaustion had taken over him, the product of a lack of sleep and an awful fight and coming back to life-
No. Nope. Not going down that path. He closed his eyes, struggling to refocus. He needed to...he needed food. He needed rest. He needed to not be alone with his thoughts...
He needed help, he realized. He couldn't do this alone. Not now.
The communicator folded down over his eye with a thought. He took a moment to find the privacy settings and fiddle with them. He only wanted to talk to one person; no need to announce to the rest of the city just how beaten down he was right now. "Greg," he tried, wincing at just how weak his voice sounded. "Greg, are you there?"
Summary: After getting himself murdered by the Nox, Wash tries to put himself back together. He's gonna need help with this one.
Characters: Wash, Greg
Location: Wash's apartment, the high rises
Time: A day or two after the Nox enter the carnival
It wasn't the first time Wash had woken up exhausted and with no idea how he'd gotten where he was. This time was a little different; usually, whenever this happened, he'd wake up in medical or wherever he was staying, usually because someone had the compassion to drag him out of the line of fire back to someplace where he could recover. This time, he'd woken up in a garden - the garden atop the spire, his memories told him, as the haze slowly started to clear from his mind. But how had he gotten all the way up here? The last thing he remembered-
The shadow infested carnival-
Turning down a deal-
Nox mobbing him from all sides-
Agony and darkness-
He sat up sharply and clutched at his stomach, swallowing down the sudden bout of nausea that had rolled over him.
He'd died.
He'd died.
Then how was he alive? He was back in Freesia - he recognized the garden; he couldn't be anywhere else - but there was no explanation as to how he'd gotten here, how someone - Lux? He didn't know - had put him back together after the Nox had gotten through with him. Would he find a whole host of new scars the next time he took his armor off?
He shivered and swallowed hard as another bout of nausea hit him at the thought. No. Not here. He had to- he had to keep moving. Find someplace safe. Figure out how long he'd been out. He had to go.
It took him two tries to get to his feet, and half an hour to get down the stairs. The nausea had subsided - small favors - but whatever had happened to get him back here had left him exhausted and weak. By the time he reached the bottom, he was shaking almost too hard to stand. Luckily, the high rises were close, even if those would involve more stairs.
As it turned out, those stairs were hell.
He had just enough energy to close the door of his apartment behind him and remove his armor before he collapsed on the couch. Bone-deep exhaustion had taken over him, the product of a lack of sleep and an awful fight and coming back to life-
No. Nope. Not going down that path. He closed his eyes, struggling to refocus. He needed to...he needed food. He needed rest. He needed to not be alone with his thoughts...
He needed help, he realized. He couldn't do this alone. Not now.
The communicator folded down over his eye with a thought. He took a moment to find the privacy settings and fiddle with them. He only wanted to talk to one person; no need to announce to the rest of the city just how beaten down he was right now. "Greg," he tried, wincing at just how weak his voice sounded. "Greg, are you there?"
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But he had asked Greg to come. (Kind of. Halfway. It still counted, because he was here.)
And he'd known he couldn't handle being alone right now.
And Greg was the kind of guy to play songs in a bar for the asshole who'd yelled at him the day before without even knowing him. Of course he'd be concerned. Of course he'd care.
He opened his mouth, and closed it. He couldn't lead with what had happened. Those were words that still wouldn't come. "When you fought the Nox -it didn't talk to you, did it?"
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"Well, they talked to me. I went into the carnival-" Last night? A few days ago? How long had it been since he-
He shook his head roughly, trying to dislodge the oncoming panic. No. He could handle this. He was not going to lose it.
"I don't know if anything they said was true," he continued, trying to pick up the pieces of the conversation, "but at the end of it they offered me a deal. They wanted to take whatever magic I have and replace it with theirs - shadow magic." The fact that he was still mentally tripping over the idea of having magic at all probably factored into his continued inability to use it.
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The whole scenario sounded an awful lot like a set-up. Shadows, deals, trades... Greg watched Wash very carefully. This story didn't have a happy ending, but the question at this moment was which bad turn it took.
"That... doesn't sound like a great idea."
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One problem at a time.
"I turned them down. They-" He stopped as the words seized up in his throat. Saying it brought up memories, memories he hadn't dealt with yet, memories that would stay vivid and ugly no matter how much time passed - memories of his-
He'd closed his eyes at some point, tightened his grip on the couch cushion so much that his arms were shaking. He couldn't-
He had to. He couldn't run from this forever, and he couldn't handle it alone. He needed to get through this.
And if he broke-
Well, it wouldn't be the first time, now would it.
"They tore me apart," he managed, voice barely above a whisper. "I- I died."
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The man before him was the same one he'd seen before, at a glance--whole, alive. Yet Greg had no reason to doubt him. A hand closed over his stomach, as though searching. They were all magic now.
He swallowed through a throat suddenly gone tight. "Wash..." He didn't know what to say. There wasn't some easy fatherly wisdom to dole out about getting ripped apart by monsters. This wasn't the sort of thing he was supposed to deal with, he was never meant to get in this deep.
Now, he was in this deep, and he did have to deal with it. If Greg was mortified at the mere idea of it, it had nothing on the one who had gone through it. Wash needed someone, and he'd picked him. One hand rested on Wash's, gripping at the couch. He couldn't find words, but hopefully that would say something to him.
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And he'd never forget it. He didn't even have the luxury, the broken coping mechanism of taking the worst of his memories and filing them away as Not His, as the product of a tortured, fractured AI that had burned its death throes into the back of his brain. This one wasn't Epsilon's fault; it was his. He'd died, and he wasn't sure he could live with that.
He'd tensed, head bowed, until his whole body was shaking and his face was twisted into a grimace. His eyes snapped open when Greg laid his hand on top of his, and he let out one strangled gasp, and then another - the sounds of someone trying desperately to put their broken psyche back together and failing miserably.
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"Wash... Wash, c'mon, look at me." Greg shifted again to better be in front of Wash, more firmly gripping his hand. "I'm right here. Okay? You're out of there. Stick with me, pal."
Wash needed to deal with this, but he couldn't get lost in it, either. Gems shrugged off regeneration like it was no big deal, a puff of smoke and light and their day goes on. It was a fact of reality, something that simply happened every now and then. He and Wash weren't Gems, but by Greg's count, they weren't quite human anymore, either.
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And now he was stuck here.
He choked and doubled over as the realization turned his stomach. It didn't matter what he did - he couldn't get out. Even dying was just a revolving door that spat him back into this place. "I died for this war," he managed, "and that still doesn't get me out of fighting this goddamn war!"
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The worst part of it was, Wash was right. They were trapped in a world far from their own, outnumbered and out of their depth, fighting for people who didn't care about them or want them there. They had no guidance, no incentive to keep going, not even a solid promise they'd get home if they won this foreign war. There wasn't a bright side, or silver lining. There was no comfort to give.
Greg was shaking, too. He was scared. Of Wash, for Wash. For himself, for everyone here. What were they supposed to do? Why were people counting on them to do this? What happened if they couldn't?
He didn't have answers. He didn't have any words at all, not for either of them. He just set his jaw, and held Wash's hand still. He needed it too, at this moment.
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He didn't have enough energy to keep this going. Whatever had brought him back and reassembled him had left him with nothing left to give. Slowly, the tension eased out of his arms and his back, leaving him in a heap on the couch, with the Stones still playing quietly in the background.
You can't always get what you want
but if you try sometimes
you might find
you get what you need
Well. That was fucking opportune, wasn't it.
He couldn't quite manage a laugh, bitter as it would have been; he just huffed a few times, before even that collapsed into erratic breathing.
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"I have a son, back home." The words came suddenly, and he wasn't sure why. His eyes fixed on the far corner, his free hand tugging at the bottom of the shirt. "I need... I need to see him again.
"If I... if I die, in this..." It felt, suddenly, like less of an "if" and more of a "when." He was the last person to be of any use in a war. "If that happens, and I come back... I might still be able to get back to him." Greg tried to smile, at that barest thread of a silver lining. He didn't succeed. "We'll still have chances."
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It took Wash a few moments to find words and a few more to summon the wherewithal to get them out. "You'll see him," he said quietly. "At the last place I was, if anyone left, they woke up right where they'd left off - no time had passed back home. I don't see why this place would be any different." That was about all the contribution to the silver lining that he had.
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Greg wondered if Wash had anyone he needed to see, wherever his home was.
After a long stretch of silence, Greg sighed, and straightened up, just a little. "Wash... I gotta ask you something."
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Wash let himself sink into the silence, exhaustion graying out the edges of his thoughts. So Greg had a son. Probably a good kid, if his dad was anything to go by. He toyed with the idea of maybe meeting Greg's kid and discarded it almost immediately. Nope. The last thing a war zone needed was kids. He'd seen enough of that already-
He winced, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Evidently he couldn't go ten seconds without digging up some form of trauma. Great.
He opened his eyes when Greg spoke and pushed himself upright. "Yeah?"
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He considered playing it off, trying to turn things light again, back to comfortable territory. With Steven, distracting him with food usually cleared things right up.
Wash wasn't Steven, though. He was an adult, and had to get talked to like one.
"Just... try not to take too much on alone, all right? Out there, or, yknow..." He tapped at his head. "In here. You don't have to come to me, but... it's always better to have a buddy system."
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"I used to do that," he said after a few seconds of silence and several attempts to assemble his thoughts that ended in utter failure. "Handle everything alone. I didn't have a choice." Because he'd had nobody left that he could trust; those who hadn't been lying to him all along had died before he'd gotten to see them again. "But...I don't think I can do that anymore." He'd gotten too accustomed to having a team - to having friends - to go back to handling everything alone. Not if he could help it. "That's why I called you."
"So...thanks. For coming."