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parannoyedWho: 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.]
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