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)
legionworld2016-09-22 05:41 pm
unrecovered) wrote in legionworld2016-09-22 05:41 pm
Entry tags:
Sitting on the dock of the bay [Open]
Who| Wash and whomever wants to bother him
What| Wash is having one hell of a week and ismoping ruminating about it.
Where| The Habitat Deck
When| During the TTHS investigation, after catching Reaper
It's quiet, and right now, that's what Wash wants.
He can usually keep his massive fuckups to one a week, or one every couple of weeks if things are quiet. Here, somehow, he's managed three over the span of several days, and that's-
It's unacceptable. He can't keep doing this. He has to be better.
So he's found a quiet place on the habitat deck - a lake in the mountains, where the beach is more gravel than sand and the treeline comes nearly to the water itself - to sit and think. He knows it belongs to someone else - his own spot on the habitat deck is still a small expanse of nothing, since he still hasn't figured out what to put in there that won't hurt somehow - but hopefully whoever belongs to this spot is out somewhere and won't come back today.
He puts his back to a tree, faces the water, and sinks down to the ground, thinking. If he can go over what's happened these past few days and find his mistakes, he can do better next time, or avoid the situation altogether. He knew he wasn't prepared for the fight on Talok IV - nobody was, really - but he can be prepared next time. He can start carrying live rounds, for one - they'll be highly regulated, but it'll be better than nothing. He can also...he can...how the hell is he supposed to prepare for an ambush?
Well, he'll figure out a way and he'll do it. 'It was a surprise' isn't good enough - not with people's lives on the line. He'll have to do better next time, whenever the inevitable 'next time' rolls around.
As for his conversation with Chief, he...he said some things he shouldn't have. He was on painkillers, but that can't be an excuse. He needs to have more control, full stop. He needs to-
He needs to not ruin any more friendships. He's done more than enough of that in his life, and he doesn't have that many to begin with. He can't afford to lose any more.
He doesn't want to lose any more.
He still wants to be friends with Chief, even if Chief is (rightfully) mad at him.
Fuck. Fuck. Come back to that one later. The situation with Reaper-
He'd wanted a win so badly that he'd failed to follow protocol - protocol he should damn well know by now - and as a result, he'd put everyone on the ship in danger. Including civilians. Including kids. He- he needed to-
God damn it.
He shakes his head roughly. This isn't working. He can't focus on the facts - he keeps getting tied up in guilt and shame, and that's not going to help him. He needs to-
He doesn't know anymore.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, gazing out over the lake. At least the view is nice. It's the only thing that's any good around here right now.
What| Wash is having one hell of a week and is
Where| The Habitat Deck
When| During the TTHS investigation, after catching Reaper
It's quiet, and right now, that's what Wash wants.
He can usually keep his massive fuckups to one a week, or one every couple of weeks if things are quiet. Here, somehow, he's managed three over the span of several days, and that's-
It's unacceptable. He can't keep doing this. He has to be better.
So he's found a quiet place on the habitat deck - a lake in the mountains, where the beach is more gravel than sand and the treeline comes nearly to the water itself - to sit and think. He knows it belongs to someone else - his own spot on the habitat deck is still a small expanse of nothing, since he still hasn't figured out what to put in there that won't hurt somehow - but hopefully whoever belongs to this spot is out somewhere and won't come back today.
He puts his back to a tree, faces the water, and sinks down to the ground, thinking. If he can go over what's happened these past few days and find his mistakes, he can do better next time, or avoid the situation altogether. He knew he wasn't prepared for the fight on Talok IV - nobody was, really - but he can be prepared next time. He can start carrying live rounds, for one - they'll be highly regulated, but it'll be better than nothing. He can also...he can...how the hell is he supposed to prepare for an ambush?
Well, he'll figure out a way and he'll do it. 'It was a surprise' isn't good enough - not with people's lives on the line. He'll have to do better next time, whenever the inevitable 'next time' rolls around.
As for his conversation with Chief, he...he said some things he shouldn't have. He was on painkillers, but that can't be an excuse. He needs to have more control, full stop. He needs to-
He needs to not ruin any more friendships. He's done more than enough of that in his life, and he doesn't have that many to begin with. He can't afford to lose any more.
He doesn't want to lose any more.
He still wants to be friends with Chief, even if Chief is (rightfully) mad at him.
Fuck. Fuck. Come back to that one later. The situation with Reaper-
He'd wanted a win so badly that he'd failed to follow protocol - protocol he should damn well know by now - and as a result, he'd put everyone on the ship in danger. Including civilians. Including kids. He- he needed to-
God damn it.
He shakes his head roughly. This isn't working. He can't focus on the facts - he keeps getting tied up in guilt and shame, and that's not going to help him. He needs to-
He doesn't know anymore.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, gazing out over the lake. At least the view is nice. It's the only thing that's any good around here right now.
no subject
He has to admit that Dipper has a point, and part of him wants to feel better with that realization. The problem is, while Dipper has a point, Brainy had a better one. It would be nice to think that he could be allowed to make a wrong decision every now and again, but his fuckups always came with consequences, and they usually affected the people around him. People had died because of his mistakes before, and it would be selfish and stupid to think that the same didn't apply here. If anything, getting lucky and taking down Reaper without incident is the exception that proves the rule.
"He actually did get me from behind," Wash starts, because that detail is going to bother him if he doesn't set it straight. "That's how the fight started, and that's why I left once he was down." Because I wasn't allowed to kill him is the end to that sentence, but Dipper doesn't need to hear that.
"Look, Brainiac may have been manipulative, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. There are people on the ship that can't defend themselves - not just kids - and my decision put them all in danger. Mistakes like that get people killed, and no amount of caring about anyone is going to make up for that." There's a good amount of personal experience behind that statement threatening to boil over, and Wash steels himself and buries it. This is not the time. "I listened to my ego instead of following protocol, and we're all lucky that no one got hurt as a result. Brainiac had every right to say what he did." Brainy got his point across, and Wash is learning from his mistake, or at least trying to. That's what matters.
no subject
"I still think it's malarkey."
Yes, he actually just used the word 'malarkey' in a sentence. Despite not being a senior citizen.
His expression relaxed enough that he stopped jutting out his chin, but he kept glaring out at the water.
Then his voice went soft, as he said, "Even if you see it as a mistake and want to not make the same one again, you better not be, like, really upset about it. Just the normal amount of upset about it. Like this kind of upset about it --"
He narrowed his eyes slightly and nodded thoughtfully, like someone self-reflecting and deciding yes, indeedy, they needed to engage in some careful, subtle self-improvement. It was reflective and responsible -- but not sad.
"Not like 'I feel bad about myself' upset."
He didn't like seeing how Wash had deflated as he'd been yelled at, and didn't like how he'd looked when he'd walked in.
no subject
...well, okay, he's pretty sure Dipper isn't the former, at least. There's no telling on the latter one.
"And you're entitled to your opinion."
But then Dipper goes quieter, and...well, Wash understands what Dipper's getting at, but Dipper doesn't quite get it. Not really. "You realize your definition of 'normal' and mine are very different, right? This is just...how I handle things."
Quit telling Wash to quit beating himself up. It's one of the few things he's really good at.
no subject
"I don't really have a sense of normal." It was long gone. "I mean, I guess I sort of do."
Maybe it was what things were like before? But back before Gravity Falls, all that stuff still existed. It was out there...waiting. Possible and real. Reality itself was what was unreal.
"All I know is I made a deal with a demon one time and it almost made the apocalypse happen sooner instead of later." A pause. "And I totally knew he was a demon. And a liar. And I still went for it because I was, like, obsessed with getting the answers I wanted to something. It wasn't like I was an idiot, I just ignored how risky and dumb it was."
He held out both hands like holding the weight of his dumbness in them.
"Mistakes happen, man. As long as nobody was hurt, you can just learn from it. It just doesn't seem very handle-ey if you're sad about it."
A pause.
"Instead of like, 'hey, no deal with a demon next time. And that's one to grow on.'"
no subject
But, evidently it was, and it's still a surprise. Also, Dipper's sliding scale of weird is completely broken. No question about that.
But somehow - somehow - that's not the point of the story. "As long as nobody was hurt, right?" He settles in and shifts his gaze back to the lake. "So what do you do when your mistakes get people hurt?" That's not a rhetorical question - he wants Dipper's answer.
no subject
And it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't listened to that little, power-hungry, yellow whisper he'd known was wrong.
Then Dipper stopped thinking about himself, and tried to think about where Wash was coming from. Wash had told him about the thing that had happened to his brain, too. He was a soldier. Soldiers did bad things sometimes.
"Then it's okay to feel sad. I guess," he said thoughtfully, staring out at the lake. "But not forever. Not for a really long time. And not like in a way where it goes away and comes back if you make an entirely different mistake. If you're just sad you won't become something better. You'll...just be sad. That doesn't help anyone."
Grunkle Stan wasn't sad about most of his mistakes and had stopped being sad about the one that really hurt Great Uncle Ford by getting him lost in the multiverse. And Stan'd still saved the world. He'd saved everyone. He hadn't needed to be sad forever over what happened to be a good person or save people.
"Maybe the good things you do don't just erase the bad things, but the bad things don't erase the good ones, either. So you can sit here feeling all bad about yourself for making a risky mistake that didn't hurt anybody and feel like it's a big thing or whatever. Or you can think about how it's one small thing in a pile of a lot of things. And one of the other things in the pile -- just as big -- was how you really helped me. So that I was okay. Which means I can help a lot of other people be okay."
The stones his teke had kicked up were still floating around him and plucked them out of the air and put them in a pile. They were all similar sizes.
"Like that."