hfm_logs | 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?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He wasn't out. He was never out. His memory wouldn't let him go; never out of Epsilon's influence, never free of his own memories, and now he was stuck here-

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!"

Greg's breath caught behind his teeth as Wash yelled, nearly shrinking away from him on instinct. He had to tell himself, quickly, that it wasn't him who was getting yelled at. Probably. Just anger, frustration, at all that was happening.

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.

Wash didn't have any words anymore - not after that explosion. He sat, tense, head nearly on his knees, silently shaking himself apart.

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.

For a long while, the only sound in the room was the music. Greg certainly was glad he'd popped it in before everything started breaking. It gave him something to focus on. Wash puffed out something like a laugh, while Greg mused on. They weren't getting anything they wanted. So what was it they needed?

"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."

Wash's breathing had settled by the time Greg spoke up, so his quiet, sharp intake of breath was noticeable. Greg had a kid. That sure explained some things.

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.

"Yeah... you mentioned that, before." Wash had been through all this, already. He kept getting pulled into these things, fighting in someone else's magic war, and letting them eat away at him.

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."

He shrugged weakly. "Worth repeating."

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?"

For another moment, Greg didn't speak, chewing his cheek as he second guessed himself. He couldn't imagine the sort of things Wash had evidently gone through. He didn't want to. Who was he to advise?

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."

That was actually pretty solid advice, of the type that Wash usually shrugged off in favor of his own coping mechanisms or sheer stubbornness. The thing was, neither of those were working for him today - or very much at all anymore, really.

"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."

I don't believe it; I had to see it [Closed]

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