Agent Washington (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
parannoyed) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-08 10:09 pm
parannoyed) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-08 10:09 pm
Entry tags:
Spiral [closed]
Who: Closed to Carolina, Tucker, and York
What: Wash has a little freakout
Where: A random little alcove
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Mental health stuff with a character kind of paranoia spiraling
[Wash had needed some time to punch things in the training room after returning from the mission.]
[He was trying not to spiral. It's not even like they'd exchanged blows. It was the simple fact that he and South had both tried (succeeded) to kill each other, they both were insulting each other and wishing death on each other or tossing around vague threats.]
[But he'd been the one North had taken a defensive posture at. He'd been the one North seemed almost ready to throw down with. He'd been the one that was suddenly an enemy. So much for all that talk about forgiveness and being friends and - and - ]
[No, he was not going to spiral. He was not going to fall down into the paranoia hole. He was not going to let a stupid moment of a friend getting protective of a sibling make him lose it. He was not going to let it make him doubt everything and start wondering if everyone else had some dividing line. Had someone who was more important.]
[Someone else was always more important.]
[It was easy to see everyone else falling away instantly. New friends and friendly acquaintances on the rig? Strangers. Why would any of them really care? Carolina and York? They'd obviously put each other first before him, when the chips were down. Tucker? Tucker would - ]
[If Church... ]
[But Church was gone. That was the thing. Maybe if Church was there, Church would come first, but he was dead.]
[Then again, York, North, and South had been dead, too. So he could chalk that up to being decided purely by circumstance. Right now, Tucker might have his back, but if there was another magical time travel resurrection, he'd have someone else he'd care about more.]
[You're spiraling.]
[It was almost worse for the fact he and South had mutually agreed on the verbal sparring to vent enough frustration to prevent actual violence. And even more painful to think that if North had known that it was all bluster, it still might not have mattered. The fact she'd betrayed him first certainly didn't.]
[He wasn't supposed to be this soft. How'd he gone from working with the Meta to do the hard things he needed to for survival, to letting himself get this vulnerable? It didn't change that his sense of right and wrong was starting to grow back, it didn't change his decision to try to screw over Jorgmund instead of help them. But it was threatening to change how much of his time as a New Hire he planned to shoulder alone. He'd been slowly letting people in but alone was safer, wasn't it? No chance of betrayal by someone telling him they were his friend and that they were going to look out for him, and then just changing their mind because someone else was always more important. Alone was less painful because nothing dragged harder on your soul than getting your hopes up, or wondering if someone would come for you when you were scared and confused and -]
[(("They'll come for me. My friends will - they'll -" he'd slurred out. She'd answered coolly: "No one is coming, Agent Washington. You know I'm right." "Not an agent anymore. Not."))]
[You think these are your thoughts, says a voice in his head, but you're only half right. You're starting to hear me now.]
[Wash lightly taps his sweaty forehead against the punching bag, resting it there.]
Of course I do, you're me.
[Am I? You're spiraling. And you know why. It's not just this moment. You can feel it now, can't you. The edges of the empty space they left. The echoes of what they did to you.]
[To us.]
There is no us! Where are you getting a plural??
[This had to be some bullshit from Epsilon, right? Leaking out because he was upset right now and missing time and whenever his brain was slightly scrambled, there was still that old damage that leaked in. But it didn't sound like Epsilon, and Epsilon had been a presence. Memories that weren't his crowding in. Not an empty space he could find by prodding around it, like the sore gums around a pulled tooth.]
[Why did his thoughts - his voice - sound like him but not him? Why was something as minor as a friend getting pissed and treating him like an enemey setting him off like this?]
[But this had happened before, with Tucker in Medbay, With York in the training area. There was something deeper underneath everything, causing reactions of panic or pain, and it was like things sometimes kicked up the silt of a riverbed and unearthed something nastier hiding underneath.]
[((The door was steel.))]
Alone is safer.
[Bzzt, wrong.]
[After an hour and a half with a punching bag in the training room, it still isn't enough. He doesn't even make it back to his room before needing to hit something again. He finds a little alcove tucked away from everyone, finds a metal wall and starts punching it until his knuckles split. Only someone paying careful attention to their surroundings would hear it, due to all the weird noises the rig made, the thunks and the pingpingpings.]
[((The door and walls were steel. The floor was concrete. He would lay on it, unfocused, drugged, gaze directed at the door, waiting for Carolina to throw it open, or the others to come stumbling through. Waiting and waiting. Waiting.))]
[Alone was safer. He didn't need anyone so why was he getting so upset over one friend getting pissed?]
[You're spiraling.]
[((She had been right in the end, hadn't she.))]
[Good. I'll be here. When you finally reach the bottom.]
[((No one ever came.))]
[I'll be here when you hit the bottom, the voice that is and isn't his says, and I know you don't really trust it, that you have trouble believing it - but so will they.]
What: Wash has a little freakout
Where: A random little alcove
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Mental health stuff with a character kind of paranoia spiraling
[Wash had needed some time to punch things in the training room after returning from the mission.]
[He was trying not to spiral. It's not even like they'd exchanged blows. It was the simple fact that he and South had both tried (succeeded) to kill each other, they both were insulting each other and wishing death on each other or tossing around vague threats.]
[But he'd been the one North had taken a defensive posture at. He'd been the one North seemed almost ready to throw down with. He'd been the one that was suddenly an enemy. So much for all that talk about forgiveness and being friends and - and - ]
[No, he was not going to spiral. He was not going to fall down into the paranoia hole. He was not going to let a stupid moment of a friend getting protective of a sibling make him lose it. He was not going to let it make him doubt everything and start wondering if everyone else had some dividing line. Had someone who was more important.]
[Someone else was always more important.]
[It was easy to see everyone else falling away instantly. New friends and friendly acquaintances on the rig? Strangers. Why would any of them really care? Carolina and York? They'd obviously put each other first before him, when the chips were down. Tucker? Tucker would - ]
[If Church... ]
[But Church was gone. That was the thing. Maybe if Church was there, Church would come first, but he was dead.]
[Then again, York, North, and South had been dead, too. So he could chalk that up to being decided purely by circumstance. Right now, Tucker might have his back, but if there was another magical time travel resurrection, he'd have someone else he'd care about more.]
[You're spiraling.]
[It was almost worse for the fact he and South had mutually agreed on the verbal sparring to vent enough frustration to prevent actual violence. And even more painful to think that if North had known that it was all bluster, it still might not have mattered. The fact she'd betrayed him first certainly didn't.]
[He wasn't supposed to be this soft. How'd he gone from working with the Meta to do the hard things he needed to for survival, to letting himself get this vulnerable? It didn't change that his sense of right and wrong was starting to grow back, it didn't change his decision to try to screw over Jorgmund instead of help them. But it was threatening to change how much of his time as a New Hire he planned to shoulder alone. He'd been slowly letting people in but alone was safer, wasn't it? No chance of betrayal by someone telling him they were his friend and that they were going to look out for him, and then just changing their mind because someone else was always more important. Alone was less painful because nothing dragged harder on your soul than getting your hopes up, or wondering if someone would come for you when you were scared and confused and -]
[(("They'll come for me. My friends will - they'll -" he'd slurred out. She'd answered coolly: "No one is coming, Agent Washington. You know I'm right." "Not an agent anymore. Not."))]
[You think these are your thoughts, says a voice in his head, but you're only half right. You're starting to hear me now.]
[Wash lightly taps his sweaty forehead against the punching bag, resting it there.]
Of course I do, you're me.
[Am I? You're spiraling. And you know why. It's not just this moment. You can feel it now, can't you. The edges of the empty space they left. The echoes of what they did to you.]
[To us.]
There is no us! Where are you getting a plural??
[This had to be some bullshit from Epsilon, right? Leaking out because he was upset right now and missing time and whenever his brain was slightly scrambled, there was still that old damage that leaked in. But it didn't sound like Epsilon, and Epsilon had been a presence. Memories that weren't his crowding in. Not an empty space he could find by prodding around it, like the sore gums around a pulled tooth.]
[Why did his thoughts - his voice - sound like him but not him? Why was something as minor as a friend getting pissed and treating him like an enemey setting him off like this?]
[But this had happened before, with Tucker in Medbay, With York in the training area. There was something deeper underneath everything, causing reactions of panic or pain, and it was like things sometimes kicked up the silt of a riverbed and unearthed something nastier hiding underneath.]
[((The door was steel.))]
Alone is safer.
[Bzzt, wrong.]
[After an hour and a half with a punching bag in the training room, it still isn't enough. He doesn't even make it back to his room before needing to hit something again. He finds a little alcove tucked away from everyone, finds a metal wall and starts punching it until his knuckles split. Only someone paying careful attention to their surroundings would hear it, due to all the weird noises the rig made, the thunks and the pingpingpings.]
[((The door and walls were steel. The floor was concrete. He would lay on it, unfocused, drugged, gaze directed at the door, waiting for Carolina to throw it open, or the others to come stumbling through. Waiting and waiting. Waiting.))]
[Alone was safer. He didn't need anyone so why was he getting so upset over one friend getting pissed?]
[You're spiraling.]
[((She had been right in the end, hadn't she.))]
[Good. I'll be here. When you finally reach the bottom.]
[((No one ever came.))]
[I'll be here when you hit the bottom, the voice that is and isn't his says, and I know you don't really trust it, that you have trouble believing it - but so will they.]
A BIT LATER...
She wants to ask why this is apparently rating a good meeting place right now, but then her eyes hit Wash's knuckles and that train of thought completely derails. ]
What happened to you?
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[He'll tell her the truth in a minute but it's hard to just open with it, full sincerity salvos firing.]
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[ The joke nudges her concern levels down a little, at least, and she can answer in kind. Her eyebrows are up, expectant. ]
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[He picks at the scabs now forming on his knuckles.]
On the mission, South and I got stuck together - long story - and we struck up a kind of...
"Armistice" sounds more aggressive than "truce," so let's go with that. But part of the agreement was we can still wish the other would drop dead and constantly threaten each other. [Sarcastically.] Playfully.
Just because it's a way to let us vent without actually stabbing each other in the eye.
[He looks at the floor.]
North saw us doing it. She wasn't the one he got into a fight stance at, ready to treat as a threat.
I know she's his sister, I know it's just...family.
But, uh, someone acting like they were trying to forgive me and help me and support me and then - backtracking on a dime, even for an understandable reason...
Well. I almost catastrophized my way into thinking everyone that had ever tried to be my friend - ever - secretly saw me as a threat and would stab me in the back at a moment's notice and always, always, always put me second.
[He shrugs awkwardly.]
But I talked to Tucker. It...helped.
[A pause.]
And now I'm talking to you. About my feelings - and God is it weird how natural this feels.
[Like, bam, just instantly knowing it's okay to unload.]
no subject
As he talks about what went down with North, she draws in a long breath and lets it back out, but she does not interrupt.
She needs to thank Tucker. And tell him a few things she didn't have time to before Whatever The Hell All That Was. ]
Well, I'm glad he got to you.
And it's okay, Wash. I know it's weird. You get used to hiding everything.
[ And she's grateful that he's coming back around, she knows how delicate this has been and god dammit of course North's not as fine underneath as he pretends to be. It only makes sense. None of them ever has been. ]
How are your hands?
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[He holds them up for her to see.]
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[ Carolina examines his hands. She isn't hesitant or awkward about touching them or turning them, she's confident and gentle.
The list of people Carolina has any casual physical contact with is extremely short, but Wash is (usually, barring time travel and shitty mind altering other-world adventures) a large percentage of that list. ]
I think you're right. At least you're not the first one of us Medical's seen with busted knuckles.
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[It...it makes him wonder about a few things they haven't talked about, that she's gotten this gentle with him. He wonders how exactly they got here, how the both of them reached some kind of softness in themselves where this became okay.]
[He wonders what created both the trust she clearly feels in showing her gentle side, and the trust he feels almost on reflex, especially now at a time he's a little on edge.]
[And he wonders if under the circumstances, she and Tucker would've told him if he and Carolina and weren't just friends. Is she holding back on something else, worried about how forgetting it might upset him, worried it was too much of a stretch to believe at this point in his memories?]
[He doesn't ask. He doesn't want to make it weird, especially if it's just a very close friendship.]
[He also doesn't want the gentleness to stop. It somehow soothes the parts of him that are most hurt, that are carrying the most pain, underlying the memory loss. Feeling her be that close soothes him, like Tucker's words had.]
[Your friend, says the voice in his head. Your best friend - though Tucker's right up there with her.]
[The expression he looks at her with melts away from the anxious one, the edgy one. He looks lost and found all at once.]
I told Tucker...
Part of why it freaked me out so much, worrying that all of a sudden I was alone - it wasn't because it was that bad for it to happen me in the present. It touched on on something deeper.
[His voice gets hoarse.]
They did something. Even though I can't remember it, I can tell that they did. And there was a time I was waiting for you guys to kick down a door and come get me, and you never came.
[Unlike with Tucker, this time he gets teary-eyed.]
And I knew you would if you could, that something must've happened. I remember enough to know that's what I thought, that you and the guys would be there in a heartbeat if you could. But for some reason you couldn't. That either I'd been taken that far away - or even worse, that something might have happened to you all...
The thing with North hit on that. Somehow. Even though I can't remember what they did.
[Despair. Hopelessness. Worry that something had happened to them too. Especially since he'd believed the whole other dimension story was far-fetched, even for the kind of lives they led. That it was more likely it was some weird head game in their own universe being done for some unknown reason by an unknown enemy.]
["Your friends are impossibly far away. They're a whole world away." He'd thought it was a lie to break him and remembers now, that that's what he'd thought.]
[And he knows now that it worked. That it had broken him. Because at some point he realized the only thing that would've held them back this long was if they were a world away.]
[Or dead.]
["I really am alone, aren't I" had kicked up the deeper (same) sentiment, digging into a moment where he really was, where he realized it was just him and what was being done to him, with no end in sight, with his friends probably agonizing over his disappearance a whole universe away. Or gone.]
[He holds onto her hands more tightly, not wanting the touch to end.]
[He almost tells her. Almost tells her what he does know they did. About what they put in his head.]
[All just at a touch.]
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They're going to pay for this.
[ They've been through hell together, even if Wash can't remember, and she never wants him to have to face another one alone. It's injustice. He doesn't deserve this. She hasn't been able to protect him, Tucker, or even the former members of the team she already failed in the past.
She cannot protect them from this place, and she hates it.
For just a moment Carolina holds him tight, as if this can. ]
Wash, we are getting out of here and they're going to pay for this.
[ She doesn't know when, or how, but this is a promise. ]
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[Then he throws his arms around her and it grasps at the fabric of her jumpsuit as best as it can and then...it goes still.]
[And then he is somewhere safe, hugging her tightly like this. Warm and safe and...he's home. Because home is her and the guys. He's not as used to hugging her outside their armor, but it still feels the same in most of the important ways - the ferocity has been there before in the occasional hug.]
[They aren't the most touchy feely but when she does...]
[They -]
[They aren't the most -]
[Oh.]
[This is not happening to him from where he's been buried deep under cold trauma and a broken connection to the outside world. He's present, he can feel this much more strongly, he can -]
[He can move. He can move his body.]
[The Other, he's gone quiet - pacified enough to relax and that means -]
[Wash slowly backs away slightly, without letting go - he can't let go when that physical comfort did this. Tears stream down his face, when until now Wash hasn't let himself outright cry despite any of the times he's been upset. Gotten a little glassy-eyed maybe, but in years past he'd had much more of a poker face - after all those debriefings and counseling sessions at the project.]
[In recent years, especially during that whole thing where he walked back into the bullet with his name on it? Oh boy does he he cry more than he's let on. Thank fucking God for helmets for preventing things from getting real awkward real fast with your more emotionally constipated friends. Even if they would've understand due to that whole accepting-his-fate thing.]
Carolina?
[Her name is choked out like he hasn't been allowed to talk in ages and almost forgot how.]
Oh God, I can talk, too. I can talk. I can talk!
[His eyes are wide and wild.]
This isn't going to last long! He relaxed just enough for me to push him down but that is going to last all of two fucking seconds because of how wound up I always was back then.
[Back then. As in he's speaking from a perspective of the future.]
[His voice is ragged, almost tormented. He starts shaking uncontrollably, the way you'd expect a POW to act after being locked for days in some hole in the dark. His nose starts bleeding as his blood pressure spikes through the roof.]
I don't have much time, so I need you to listen to me very carefully, or he's going to get the two of us killed.
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[ Something extremely weird is happening, but he keeps talking and Carolina zeros in on it with a firm nod. She's backed up a little but still holding him, feeling him shake, and her eyes are on his with deadly seriousness. ]
You got me. Talk to me.
[ This is vitally important. She doesn't know exactly what's going on, but she can feel the difference here. This is him, this is her Wash, and they trust one another. She will listen now and analyze in a minute. ]
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[The words. He can't say it directly, so he tries indirectly.]
I knew a soldier once who took a blamite needle to to the head that went right through the other side without detonating. C...callosal. Syndrome. Look it up.
But not a broken connection. The opposite.
[An artificial barrier blocking both halves and the half with the memories is still conscious, not a disconnection between parts of his mind.]
It's... it's -
[He gestures to his head but can't say the words or even point to the scars, he feels his movements jerk away.]
York! My idiot younger self didn't catch it, but I noticed it. Talk to York.
[He'd felt the scars, would know there was some kind of surgery.]
And Tucker. Medbay. The Note.
[He shakes his head.]
You can break it. I'll be okay. He and I both will.
[So they know they won't be destroying the Wash who's tentatively come to trust them over the last few months. Young and old, past and present. Remove the block and he's not two halves with one locked away, both get to reconcile. And if the implant needs to be gone to make that happen, he's made his peace with that several times over.]
He still thinks there are parts he has to do alone and he's not going to change his mind in time before getting in over his head. He needs all of you. He needs me. He's changing for the better but he won't grow fast enough here.
Do what you need to and if it does what I think it'll do...it's okay.
[He can't tell her to get the implant busted because he can't say he has it, can't tell her directly "I can live with the brain damage as long we get to be me."]
[So he looks at her the way he did on Iris, and this time she can see his eyes.]
Small price to pay for saving the universe.
[She'll understand that. The permission granted to do what she needs to, even if it brings the brain damage back.]
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I'll tell them.
[ I'll be okay is the most reassurance she's had about their decisions since she reached out to Stacia. That's what they want, most of all. ]
We'll get moving. I think we know what to do now. Thank you, Wash. We're coming for you, I promise.
[ It's kind of absurd, but it's not absurd. She knows this isn't easy, and having some kind of awareness of how he feels about the deeply violatory work they're going to have to do helps.
She might not fully understand in this exact moment, not without the details, but when the time comes she will.
He echoes what he told her on Iris, and Carolina gives him one last quick squeeze and blinks back her tears before the Wash that didn't know her can reassert himself.
There are no words Carolina can say to tell him how many Piper 90s and Jorgmund Corporations she'd burn to the ground if that was what it took to save him.
Carolina and the others broke time itself for him.
He already knows. ]
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There was a point where I lost hope but only because I realized how far away you and the guys had to be, but now that you're here...
[The faith is there, it's always there. Even after suffering alone, it was still there. If he lost hope, it wasn't losing hope that they'd try, it was losing hope that they were even in the same dimension.]
[But they're here now.]
Now that you're here, I know it'll be okay.
I'll just be - I'll be here -
I'll...
[He finally stops, looks around in confusion.]
I must've zoned out for a second. What was I saying?
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[ Add North to the list of people she should probably lay an eye on sometime soon here. Carolina gives Wash's back a reassuring little thump before letting go of him. ]
Besides busting your knuckles up... you okay for now?
[ She's doing her best to play this easygoing, but making real contact with her Wash has given her a very definite and immediate to-do list.
She'll go after York first: Tucker's come a long way, but York's more subtle in a tense situation and Tucker needs more catchup. ]