Working It Out

[unrecovered]

Who| Wash and anyone who wants to come bother him
What| Wash works out some issues on a punching bag.
Where| The training gym
When| Not long after arrival, after the end of the Lantern plot
Warnings/Notes| Wash has Issues, you guys.

Once Wash gets his bearings - insomuch as he can around here, at least - it doesn't take him too long to get his hands on gym clothes that fit (easily, too - the future is weird but convenient), store his armor in his newly assigned quarters, and track down a training area. There's a lot in the gym that he doesn't recognize, but the punching bag hanging in the corner is familiar enough. It's low-tech even for him, but it works.

It should be an easy training routine to fall back on: precision blows against a stationary target, with focus on speed and technique. Unfortunately, that falls apart fairly quickly - it doesn't take much combat training to see that Wash is moving as though he's expecting the bag to hit back. It's almost as though he's seeing something else there.

To be fair, he is. His body goes through the motions of training and his mind works overtime, trying to process where he is and what he's left behind. He hasn't had time to think about Chorus, about what he and the Reds and Blues had been thrown into and barely come out of- or might still be stuck in. He doesn't know. He wound up here. They're stuck in the last battle of a hellish war and he's not there to help them-

And he knows who to blame, but the Time Trapper is out of his reach and the fuckers who co-opted the war in the first place are-

-are the ones who dragged them into this whole fucking mess on Chorus to begin with.

He sees Felix-

Asshole. Dead. Move on.

-and swings at the bag, a hard right that sends it swinging.

He sees Locus-

Broken. Not here. Nothing you can do right now. Move on.

-and follows up with a hard kick, sending the bag careening back in the other direction.

He sees Hargrove-

And to think I worked for you.

-and misjudges his next strike, skinning his knuckles against the moving bag but failing to land a hit. The face in front of him doesn't disappear. He can't derail the train of thought. He'd been where Locus had been, unstable and desperate and working for Hargrove, trying to find an out- he'd found the Reds and Blues and some weird flavor of mercy, but if he'd had a Felix instead, or been on his own, then-

I'd have been next to them, turning war into genocide. Three shades of gray instead of two.

For what it's worth, he's getting better at recognizing when he crosses the line, even when he's directing the unwarranted cruelty towards himself. He snaps back to the present and grabs the bag, stopping it mid-swing and stilling it in front of him while he breathes, grounding himself.

He's fine. He's fine. He wasn't for a while, but that was years ago and he's been working on getting better. He's a soldier. He has a job to do. Finish this new war, save the whole damn multiverse (because things can never be simple), go back to hopefully the right time and place, finish that war. He can't do any of that if he doesn't settle himself first. He has to get better.

The redness in his knuckles has already faded by the time he looks at them. They really weren't kidding about that healing factor, were they. One more thing to get used to.

He takes another deep breath, rolls his shoulders, and resumes his stance. It's easier to work through the exercise the second time around, namely because he's focusing on what he's doing and not letting his mind wander. It means he doesn't have a lot of awareness of the people around him at the moment, but if that narrow focus keeps him from seeing dead men in place of gym equipment, it's worth it.

Comments

[prettycoolguy]

"Your form's good."

The Chief is a quiet person, perhaps unnervingly so, and he's never liked drawing attention to himself. Between this and Wash's focus on the bag, perhaps it's not surprising he managed to go unnoticed for... How long has he been here, anyway? How much did he see?

The Spartan's out of his armor, and recognizable only by his voice and sheer size. His appearance isn't surprising, though. He's tall, powerfully built, and heavily scarred across what's visible of his body.

His expression, or lack thereof, is difficult to read.

[unrecovered]

Son of a bitch-

Wash stiffens in momentary shock and turns sharply, immediately dropping into a combat stance-

It takes him a moment to process, but- it has to be Master Chief. Nobody else here is that big. He straightens up, unsure and doing his absolute best not to show it. How long had he even been here? How much did he see? Wash can't tell one way or another - that expression is damn near impossible to read.

Well, he can't just stand here.

"Thanks."

This is not at all awkward.

[prettycoolguy]

Shit, he made it awkward, didn't he? He's good at that. It's always a little weird to the Chief that people react to him like this, like he's somebody in a place to judge them. His presence distracts people. He distracts people.

...Though he supposes he is judging, to a degree. He has a healthy interest in knowing the capabilities of the team. They're strangers all, and if he doesn't learn them he can't make the right call in the field. Still, he doesn't want to throw somebody off like this.

"Relax," he says, though not unkindly. He doesn't smile these days, but somehow the set of his face seems a little less severe. "I came down to work on a few things myself. Just got curious for a minute." He's not here to assess anybody.

"You're... Washington, right?"

He's good with voices. Spartans have to be.

[unrecovered]

As far as Wash is concerned, the awkwardness is all his fault. His little break from reality might have just been public to the one person whose opinion he might actually care about (and oh God he does care what Chief thinks, doesn't he. It's been so long since he's cared about other people's opinion of him so long as he gets the job done, but now here he is in front of someone he might actually want to impress and he's fucking it up). All he can feel is his list of fuckups burning in the back of his brain when he's standing in front of a war hero; someone who actually did what Wash thought he was signing up to do; someone who succeeded while the project Wash had given his everything to burned around him and he tore the rest down in a fit of broken rage.

It's hard not to feel inadequate when you're talking to the person who, at one point, you wanted to be.

"No, it's-" He gestures uselessly to the punching bag. "I- hyperfocus. Sometimes." He also occasionally makes conversations worse, like he's doing right now.

Thank God for the subject change. "Yeah. And you're Master Chief." It's a statement that's waiting for confirmation, even thought he's fairly sure he's right.

[prettycoolguy]

The Chief nods. He figures it's fairly obvious, too. The only other real contender for biggest-person-on-the-team is Reinhardt, probably.

"Just a code name," he says. "I'm not pretending to have more authority than I do, here." They've pretty much figured out they're from different (if similar) chains of command in different (if similar) worlds, but all the same. It still makes this a little awkward.

For all Wash's certainty he's the one making this weird, the Chief has equal certainty that no, it's really him.

[unrecovered]

Somehow, Wash gets the feeling that, 'yeah, well, I'd follow you' is not the right answer here, even if it's the truth. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave him with a lot to say.

Uh.

"It sounds like you've been here before," he tries. "Are things really as weird as they sound?"

[prettycoolguy]

"I showed up on Phelolu in the first wave of us," the Chief explained. "It was a while before Galactus came through, but I didn't get to see that. I disappeared for a day."

Well. Sort of.

"It was a day for me, anyway. Got to see Earth again and have a nice conversation with the brass. But it's been a couple of months, here."

"That in mind," he says, shrugging, "I'd say things are pretty weird." If his tone is anything to go by, he seems to think it's at least a little funny.

"If you just mean the culture, though, I wouldn't say I'm the best judge of that."

[notwithoutafight]

"If you break that bag, the cleaning crew is going to be pissed," Videl remarks.

She stands several feet away from Wash, well out of his range. She's been watching him for a few minutes now, hands on her hips and a frown on her lips. There's an air of confidence and ferocity radiating from her scant height and slight build, the kind that makes her presence seem much more threatening than her stature would lead someone to believe.

"As well as whoever has to replace that thing. I don't think authentic 'old-fashioned' equipment like this is easy to replace." Videl makes exaggerated finger quotes as she says 'old-fashioned,' a clear clue that the punching bag is, as far as she's concerned, anything but.

[unrecovered]

Wash tenses for a moment, then reaches out and stills the bag again before turning around. Turns out complete laser focus isn't always a good thing. He really needs to work on that.

Whoever this is, she reminds him of Carolina, namely in that 'underestimate me and die' sort of fashion. Given that everyone around here ostensibly has some form of super power, he's not about to take that warning lightly.

Speaking of which. "What makes you think I can even do that?"

[notwithoutafight]

"Because it's not hard?" Videl ventures her answer with a questioning inflection. "Even when I was back home, I could hit a sandbag hard enough to tear it open." There's a definite swelling of pride as she speaks, her frown turning upward into a cheeky grin. "And that was when I didn't have any fancy powers."

It doesn't take a genius to tell that Wash is new recruit and has been released from the Med Bay pretty recently---Especially because this was Videl's first stop when she finally convinced the med techs that she was healthy enough to leave. Alone time with a punching is the best way to work through stress, at least in her opinion.

[unrecovered]

Wash just raises an eyebrow. "Do they not make them to last where you're from?" The idea of tearing open a punching bag with bare hands is a little foreign to him. (Maine probably could have done it; then again, Maine was doing a lot of seemingly impossible things by the end.)

[notwithoutafight]

Videl shrugs. “The ones I buy at home are about as good as some of the ones here,” she replies. “These ones, at least. There's also some synthetic ones made out of some weird space future stuff but they don't quite feel right when you hit them.”

She watches the bag beside Wash, a mischievous spark dancing across her eyes. “I could demonstrate, but they've already yelled at me for it once and I don't want to get banned from the best place on the ship.”

[unrecovered]

He's seen that look before, and more than once it's ended with him facedown on the floor. That look means trouble. "Can you at least wait until I'm done using it before you break it?"

[notwithoutafight]

“It’s fine, I understand.” Videl takes a few steps back and holds up her hands in a sign of surrender, only slightly disappointed at missing an opportunity to show off. She's not her dad, after all.

“But if you want something sturdier to hit, I might be able to help you out.” She lifts her arm and presses one of the buttons on her wrist watch. A shimmer of silver shoots across her arm, engulfing her hand before snaking up under her shirt and down her other arm. Videl extends both arms from her sides, flexing her fingers. A thin layer of metal coats both of her arms, glimmering.

[isthisapidge]

Time to play every tech wizard's favorite game: Where is the wireless connection fastest in this facility?

Pidge spent exactly the minimum required amount of time in the gym at the Galaxy Garrison, down to the very second, and she sure didn't plan on jumping on a fitness regiment while she was here.

Not like the guy working the bag, who would have been of only momentary interest to her if she hadn't noticed the...something on the back of his neck. Curiosity overcame the sense that should have told her not to get near the guy actively punching without introducing herself or making a noise to indicate that she was there.

It looked technical, and implanted deep from what little she could tell as he moved like that.

[unrecovered]

Wash tends to hyperfocus as a coping mechanism; if he keeps his mind on one thing and one thing only, it prevents it from wandering and dredging up memories that aren't his or that he can't afford to deal with at the moment. The downside is that he pays zero attention to his surroundings while he's focusing that intently.

Which means he has no idea he's not alone.

He finishes a strike and steps back, pausing for a moment. Good. Time for a different sequence. He shifts stances, pulling an elbow back abruptly-

-and nearly jumps out of his skin as it connects with something behind him with a loud crack. Someone has snuck up on him, and he's just clobbered them. Fuck.

He whips around to survey the damage; hopefully there's not too much of it. Most of the people here can take a hit, right?

[isthisapidge]

Good job, Wash, you clobbered a little girl.

Pidge took the elbow straight to her forehead, which was better than cracking her glasses or breaking her nose, but he was really strong and that hurt worse than the last time she banged her head.

When her eyes refocused, she was on the floor sideways with a ringing in her ears and the sense that maybe she should have been paying more attention to her surroundings.

[unrecovered]

He's having a great day today. It just figures that the one person he'd hit on accident would be one of the smallest people on the ship.

He drops to his knees beside Pidge, supporting her neck and carefully rolling her onto her back. Her eyes look focused, which is good; still, there's no guarantee he didn't just concuss the hell out of her. "Pidge. Pidge, can you hear me?"

[isthisapidge]

"Ow...Yeah, I hear you. Good arm," she muttered, rubbing her probable bruise with the heel of her hand.

She can sit up, though who knows if Elbows won't try to keep her back down. And she didn't lose her glasses either, even as they hang off one ear.

[unrecovered]

She's conscious, she's alert, her eyes are focused, and she's not slurring or otherwise disoriented, so she's probably not concussed. Good. "That's what happen when you hide behind someone in the middle of training," he says archly. "Does anything hurt? Aside from your head."

[the_fuzz]

Judy, unlike others, politely waits until Washington has worked through an exercise before trying to get his attention, spending the intervening time getting in her own training.

"Nice work," she said appreciatively, "Any particular style you use?"

[unrecovered]

Wash isn't completely where he wants to be, but he's managed to clear his mind enough to be functional around other people, and that's going to have to be enough for now. It's good he's gotten that far, at least, because it seems like other people want to talk with him.

Admittedly, he glances to both sides before his gaze goes downwards, and- oh. That's a talking rabbit. He's pretty sure he's not hallucinating this, as those tend to be infrequent and intensely personal and a talking rabbit really doesn't fit.

Alternate dimensions are weird.

"Thanks," he replies, because why not, "and not really. Mostly just whatever works."

[the_fuzz]

"I can understand that," Judy said, nodding.

"I learned how to box at the police academy, but the class was designed with mammals a lot bigger than me in mind, so I had to improvise a lot." That had been the case for every course with a physical aspect. The fact still annoyed her a bit, even if she had managed to graduate valedictorian despite everything.

"I'm Judy Hopps, or Sly Bunny, of you go in for the whole codename thing."

[unrecovered]

Wash has about half a dozen questions after that, none of which he really wants to ask, namely because without context he has no idea where to start.

Moving on, then. "I'm Wash, or Freelancer." He's still not accustomed to the codename, namely that it's now a name instead of a title, but he'll get used to it eventually. Hopefully. Maybe. "Have you been here long?"

[the_fuzz]

"Depends on what you mean by long," Judy replied with a small shrug.

"I haven't been here as long as some of the others. though. My partner Nick and I showed up just before Galactus attacked Braal."

That had been one heck of a welcome, but at least she hadn't had to deal with it alone.