Recovery [Open]

[unrecovered]

Who| Wash, whoever wants to join him
What| Wash is still recovering from Murder World. Come bother him.
Where| Various places
When| Several days after the end of Murder World.
Warnings/Notes| He's kind of Not Okay, so approach at your own risk.

As it turns out, Wash is having a pretty terrible week. Being stuck in a murder arena for a few days on end will definitely do that to you. Seeing a dearly departed friend back from the dead with zero warning or preparation doesn't help either.

Chief had intercepted York and given Wash a chance to get the hell out of Dodge, and he'd taken it, all but sprinting through the threshold gate back to Legion World. He doesn't stop for anyone until he's outside his door, locking it behind him once he stumbles in. Only then does he check his omnicom - still disabled, dammit - and then decide that if anyone wants to come looking for him, they damn well know where to find him.

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly, and then takes another. Breathe. Slow down. It's over. Legion World is secure, for the most part, and he'd Reaper-proofed his room as best he could. It's fine. He's safe-

His brain stutters over the last phrase, and his breathing gets erratic until he forcibly smoothes it out again. No. It's over. He doesn't need to panic - he just needs to calm down and work through this.

He needs to clean up. He needs to get out of the clothes that Arcade had forced on him and into something that belongs to him. He needs to sleep.

He doesn't usually like the sonic showers - seriously, they're just weird - but right now he's grateful for them, namely that they're a lot faster than water showers. He abandons his clothes in a heap on the floor and is in and out of the shower fairly quickly. He digs through his closet to find pajamas - and it had taken him a decent amount of time and effort to try to convince the Anthramites on the ship to make him a plain t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants, and even then they'd gone overboard and gotten too complicated and he'd resorted to shopping for one and ordering it for delivery. He finally finds them and pulls them on, tying the drawstring with some difficulty, as his hands have started to shake. Dammit.

He stares down at his bed for a moment, trying to will himself to get in it and rest. He knows he's exhausted. He knows he needs sleep. He's also fighting the urge to look over his shoulder, to turn all of the lights on as high as they'll go and check every square inch of his room to make sure it's secure. It's illogical, and detrimental, and a waste of energy, and he's having a hell of a time shaking the urge to do it anyway. Turns out paranoia is dead useful when it's keeping you alive; the rest of the time, it's a bitch.

After nearly a solid minute of steeling himself and muttering reassurances that he's fine and the room is secure and everything is fine, he finally forces himself to lie down on the bed-

And gets right back up again, shaking worse than ever. Nope. He can't do it. Even in the safety of his own room, it's still too open, too exposed. But there's a few feet of space under it...

This is stupid, he realizes. It's ridiculous. It's probably not healthy. And it's the only way he's ever going to get any sleep with his paranoia keyed up as high as it is.

He yanks the blanket and pillow off the bed, drops to the floor, and scoots into the space under his bed, wrapping himself in his blanket once he gets settled in there. He's sleeping under his bed. It's patently ridiculous, but the extra surface just above his head makes him feel better. It's a small space. He can watch it easily, and it's more difficult to get into than the room itself is. He's hidden. He's safe, or at least as safe as he's ever going to get.

And that's the issue, isn't it? He's spent days on his guard for a spying mission, and days after that in survival mode in Arcade's death arena. This is the first time he's felt safe in a while, and it's what he's been looking for.

It still takes him a long time - too long - to slow his breathing and stop shaking. Finally, his eyes close, and for the first time in days, he sleeps - deeply, dreamlessly, and uninterrupted. It's a rarity in Wash's life.

He wakes up groggy and sore from having slept on the floor for...for...huh. He wiggles out from under the bed, or at least enough to see a clock. According to the date and time readings, he's been asleep under there for about sixteen hours. Evidently he'd needed the rest.

An hour or so later, he can be found in a myriad of places: in the mess hall trying to figure out just how many types of fresh fruit it has and what would taste best; in the training room, pounding away at the punching bag; on the nature deck, in that same wooded area, sitting by the rocky shore of a lake, staring out across the water and thinking. He still looks a little tired, but at least he's not visibly twitchy anymore. He must be feeling better, right?

Comments

[walkingballpit]

Getting lost on the habitat deck is becoming something of a habit for Robbie. Sometimes, it's intentional wandering, but in this case, he's taken a wrong turn. He was trying to find what he thought was a carousel. His "shortcut" through the woods has lasted what feels like a good 15 minutes. He was too dumb to bring his omnicom with him, so it's not like he can call up a clock - or a map.

He'll find his way out, he's not worried about that. He likes getting lost in here. It eats up a good chunk of his day with a pleasant nothing that can't easily be confused with sulking. It feels like fresh air, and some of the areas look like huge, urban ghost towns.

Through the woods, now, and into... a clearing that ends on a lake. Robbie lets himself flop down into a sitting position. He had to give them credit - it looked and felt like a shingle beach as he leaned back and craned his neck.

His eyes almost jumped out of his skull when he noticed Wash. "Sorry, I didn't realize this lake was taken."

Nobody does a thousand yard stare at gray water when they want company. Robbie gets back to his feet. He should go.

[unrecovered]

Wash hears someone coming and doesn't move. It's fine; he's fine now. He can handle this. Even if it's York, he can handle this. (He doesn't have much of a choice, and he can't keep avoiding York forever.)

But it's not York; it's Robbie, who doesn't seem to notice him for the first few seconds. Wash glances at him sideways - he looks okay, at least - and looks back out at the surface of the water, content to sit in silence for now.

...or not.

"It's not actually mine," he says in reply. "This is Chief's part of the deck. It's a planet called Reach." He should maybe not tell Robbie that Reach is a smoldering hunk of glass now, deliberately rendered devoid of any life with zero chance of recovery. Genocide isn't exactly the best conversation starter.

[walkingballpit]

"Yeah, but... you're using it."

Robbie wasn't sure who "the Chief" referred to. It sounded like a title. Maybe it was Kid Quantum's, or one of the civilians who kept Legion World afloat. He looked around, again, to see if he'd missed some alien clue.

No, it still looks kind of Earthy to him. Water, trees, rocks, greenery. It's not a specific place that he recognizes, but he could see it in a lot of states. "It's nice. I just - "

He hadn't wanted to intrude on anyone's personal space. "Never really thought about whether we should stay out of other people's sections or not before. Maybe I should invest in some signs for Mount Wundagore. 'Really boring, don't waste your time.'"

[unrecovered]

Okay, Wash definitely has his hangups, but Robbie's are evidently of an entirely different flavor. "I figure if the sections on this deck were supposed to be private, they'd have set it up that way. Put up barriers, or had the room look different to everyone who walked in, or something." Given that Wash's section is still a sad blank white space, setting the deck up that way would mean he'd spend a hell of a lot less time here. He needs to fix that. He needs to figure out what he can put there that isn't horribly lonely and depressing. He'll tackle that when he has a thought to spare, when he's not focused on a mission or trying to put himself back together from a mission gone wrong.

So basically never.

Which is why he keeps finding himself on the shores of a forest lake on Reach. It might be Chief's, but as long as Wash doesn't intrude, Chief doesn't seem to mind.

But evidently Robbie does. Time for a subject change, or at least a redirect. "Mount Wundagore, huh. Where's that?" Wait. "In your world, I mean. Not on the deck."

[jonesiseverywhere]

When Wash comes into the training room, he'll find Casey, doing pull ups. He's been at it for awhile, which is obvious by his sweat-stained clothes (he hasn't changed out from his pain-splattered hoodie and jeans at all) but he's still going strong. It...kind of helps that he doesn't have that much body weight to lift.

He only spots Wash when he takes a break, wiping his face with his collar jogging his way over. He'd wanted to talk to him about what a great team they made and maybe let him know that he could get off his back because he can totally handle himself.

"Yo, Wash!"

[unrecovered]

Wash sees Casey, but you don't interrupt someone else's solo workout without a purpose, so Wash leaves him to it. He's more interested in the punching bag, anyway - in his experience, it's a much more effective way to work out stress.

It's not long before Wash drops awareness of his surroundings and hyperfocuses on the bag. On one hand, it's a mistake, something he shouldn't do, something he should have broken in training a long time ago; on the other hand, it's a show of trust. Legion World is safe. He's safe. To an extent, it's true, and so he has to make the effort to let himself believe that.

He startles when Casey calls his name, but he doesn't jump out of his skin. Progress. He takes a moment to catch his breath and still the bag before he turns to face Casey. "Hey. How're you holding up?"

[jonesiseverywhere]

Casey notices that Wash seems to twitch when he calls his name, but whatever, Casey knows what it's like when you get a good workout focus going.

"Ah, I'm cool. I mean, that was up there with the craziest things I've ever done, but nothin' I can't handle."

That was crazy, but nobody got hu-

Well, Legion stopped Arcade. That's what's important in the end.

"What about you?"

[unrecovered]

Wash just raises an eyebrow. Somehow, he's not surprised that Casey's life is full of shenanigans on par with fighting clockwork monstrosities and getting thrown out of fifteenth-story windows.

"I'm fine," he lies, so calmly and easily it might as well be the truth. "Just getting back into the swing of things."

[prettycoolguy]

Maybe he should have been shaken by this. The Chief knows that he's not a good judge of how a person should respond to horrible situations. All he can go on is the people around him, and maybe he'd be closer to understanding them had it upset him a little more. He's spent the last couple of hours powering around the habitat deck, making sure Arcade's people didn't do anything to his armor. The tech team assured him it was fine, but he doesn't trust a diagnostic until he's put it through its paces once again. He started in the training room, quickly grew dissatisfied with it, and he's finally gravitated back to the slice of Reach.

Maybe it should have upset him, but it didn't. He felt anger, frustration even, but they won and he's safely locked any feelings back down where they can't get in his way. He's okay now. His body is fine, his equipment is working, and they won. Mission accomplished. Everything should be fine by that metric, the only one he was taught that mattered. If he were with his team, it would be fine. But the rest of the Legionnaires aren't Spartans, they don't work the same way, and he doesn't know what to do for them.

Wash in particular.

The Chief didn't expect to see Wash here. He hopes it's a good sign. He knows it might not be. He slows, makes a quick swiping gesture across the lower part of his faceplate, not even really thinking about it, and closes the gap at a walk. Smooth gravel crunches under heavy boots.

Then the Chief sits, like a small mountain settling to face the water.

"You're up," he observes.

[unrecovered]

Admittedly, Wash isn't a very good judge of how people should respond to situations either - not anymore, at least. His semi-public breakdown and the fact that he hadn't left his room for nearly a day are very plain evidence of that.

He hears someone coming and turns his head to see Chief in his full armor. For the first time in a long time, he's struck by just how big Chief is. This is how people see Spartans - this is how he'd seen Chief before he'd gotten to know him - all size and power, unreadable expressions and impenetrable armor.

For the first time in a long time, he feels small.

(This, he realizes, might be how people feel when they see him in armor. He'll have to remember that - not that he has a choice in that matter.)

The feeling passes as Chief makes a gesture across his helmet. Wash can't read it, but it must mean something to Chief; either way, it's a reminder that behind that faceplate is someone he's gotten to know and cares about.

Chief sits, and Wash settles back a bit, as though nothing is wrong. It's a lie, and also his default state of affairs. "I slept for sixteen hours," he points out.

[prettycoolguy]

"Good."

Alright, so maybe it's not good that Wash needed to sleep for sixteen hours, but it's good that he got the rest.

"I'd ask if you're alright, but I think we both already know the answer."

The Chief is concerned because a member of his team is having trouble and is almost definitely not using the available resources to deal with that. But it's also because it's Wash, the guy who thinks he's worth talking to for no reason about things that aren't mission critical.

The Chief doesn't have a lot of friends, or at least ones he's not the boss of. He hadn't realized how much he liked having one in Cortana until he lost her, and seeing Wash like this worries him.

[unrecovered]

Wash just raises an eyebrow at that affirmation. In a normal person, sleeping that long at a stretch is usually a sign that something is incredibly wrong.

Then again, since when has Wash been normal?

Chief speaks again, and Wash shifts his gaze back out to the water. No. He's not alright. He hasn't been for years, but he'd found a functioning level of not-quite-okay to work with over the past few years, and living through Arcade's death arena had thrown him completely off of it. He hasn't had a chance to get back to it yet - he needs more time, time he hasn't given himself yet.

So no. Not alright.

"One of my teammates once called me a 'paranoid ex-special ops guy who's used to being betrayed on a weekly basis,'" he starts, still staring out over the water. "He wasn't wrong. I spent a lot of time getting fucked over by people I trusted, and I did it once or twice myself. I just-" He stops, takes a breath, tries to gather himself, and continues on. "I thought I was done getting betrayed by people - by systems - that I trusted." Felix didn't count. He'd never trusted Felix enough for that.

"We've been ambushed twice - both times on missions that should have been uneventful. The first time was the direct result of someone in the system betraying us, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second one is too." He tries to consider his words, tries to figure out how much is too much, but- fuck it, Chief knows everything already. "I'm still on edge from spending three days fighting for my life, waiting for something to come around the corner and try to kill me. I had a hell of a time convincing myself that it was safe to sleep in my room with my door locked." Nobody needs to know that he spent the night under the bed. That's where he draws that particular line. "But I'll get over that eventually. What I can't get over is that we got betrayed - probably twice - by the system we pledged our lives and our abilities to serve. I trust the Legion, but we're interconnected with the UP, and if I can't trust them, it-" He's talking too fast. Stop. Breathe. "It's Freelancer all over again," he says, voice quiet. "I was not a good person after Freelancer fell, and I've spent a lot of time trying to get better. I can't go back - I don't want to go back - but if I can't trust the people in charge, then what am I supposed to do?"

It's deeper than he'd intended to go, more than he wanted to say. He doesn't expect an answer. He's not sure there is an answer.

[littlecousin]

Nita doesn't really train unless forced into it, but she's a natural athlete and incapable of staying idle for long, so it's inevitable she wanders into the gym eventually. Looking at her outfit, a green swimsuit accessorized fetchingly with bare feet, anyone would think she was on the way to the pool, but really, that's just how she dresses. Granted, she is on her way to the pool, but it's not like she'd be dressed any differently on the way to the mess hall or a mission. It's her culture, okay.

It's her first time here, so she follows a meandering course around the training room, poking at unfamiliar high-tech pieces of equipment, trying them out but never sticking to one long enough to count as a workout. Repetitions are boring. She does last a little longer in the gymnastics section, putting in an Olympic-caliber performance on the balance beam for the sheer joy of movement, but soon she's back on her exceedingly indirect trip to the pool, which at last brings her past Wash working out his aggression on a poor defenseless punching bag.

Nita makes sure she's inside his field of view, then waves, bare arm ornamented by a wide gold bracer. As far as she's concerned, she and Wash are friends now, and she wants to chat, because she always wants to chat, but if he wants to keep at the bag, that's fine too.

[unrecovered]

Wash continues to work the bag over, quietly oblivious to his surroundings. Legion World is safe. He doesn't have to be hyper aware here. He'll be fine.

Luckily, Nita seems to have a good idea of how to get someone's attention when they're concentrating. He catches the light glinting off moving gold out of the corner of his eye, registers that it's a person a moment later, and reaches out to still the bag, turning his full attention to her. "Hey."

[littlecousin]

"Hey Wash, what's up?" Nita gestures at the punching bag. "Besides the obvious."

She might be checking him out to make sure he's not, y'know, visibly bleeding or down a limb or something. Obviously the Legion docs would have patched him up, but she still kinda feels responsible for looking out for her more fragile teammates--she might not be much of a tactician, but she can soak the hell out of a hit--and after they got separated, she worried. More so after his little breakdown at the extraction.

Which she is tactfully not mentioning.

[unrecovered]

"Getting back to routine," he says casually. It's not completely a lie, and 'working out some stress' would have been a lot closer to the truth than he likes. Plus, he sincerely doubts Nita knows his routine as it is.

He raises an eyebrow at her wandering gaze. Seriously? Seriously. "I'm fine," he says, more patient than he actually feels. He's not fine, not really, but nobody really needs to know the full extent of that. "And you're not exactly being subtle."

[goddamngrenades]

Right. Confirmation of being dead: not required, not wanted, but now very much so in hand. Much as he'd played it off as nothing-

yeah not thinking about it.

Chief said to give Wash a week so York is ignoring the dead thing, ignoring how jarringly strange some of this technology is and settles into the comfortable half awareness of being just enough outside his own head to not bump into anyone and mostly neck deep involved in conversations about encryptions, puzzles, philosophy, and popular media with Delta. Using his partner as a security blanket, a reminder they're both here and real and ok.

The Mess hall is at least similar enough, see one see them all, that he honestly doesn't mean to sidle up next to Wash as he balances a mug of pitch black coffee and a plate of toast in one hand while squinting at the pile for an orange, muttering under his breath about trajectory and timed delays on his explosions. Training up that skill is kind of important-

Of course that's when he sees Wash right next to him and Locks up a little. Shit. shit shit shit- ok. Slowly walk away. He snags the first thing he finds (grapfruit but what the fuck ever he's had worse things) and turns on his heel to bail. Cuz.

Wash is the only one that needs time here.

[unrecovered]

Wash has half a dozen different kinds of fruit on his tray and is debating going for seven. He's just decided sure, why the hell not, if he doesn't like the weird alien fruit in front of him he has six different backups on his tray, when someone stands next to him, muttering. Having half a conversation, the other half with someone invisible and inaudible and very likely entirely internal-

It's York, probably talking with Delta. Of course it's York.

For a moment, Wash considers dropping the tray and making a break for it. It's too soon- he hasn't gotten himself together yet- he can't deal with this-

No. Fuck it. He's gotten more sleep now than he usually does over the span of half a week, he's functioning just fine, and he can't keep running from this. York is here now; therefore, Wash is going to damn well deal with it.

Except now York is turning to bail, because evidently neither of them is any good at this. So of course Wash says the first thing that comes to mind.

"Since when do you eat grapefruit?"

[goddamngrenades]

"Since Chief told me to leave you alone for a week-" It's Pre Coffee York, ok? His capacity for thought and filters are slightly out of wack in so much that they're all but absent. Delta, green and glimmering, flickers into being above York's left shoulder.

"Good Morning, Agent Washington. As you have approached us I trust you are feeling better?" He even emotes a little, lifting a hand in a tiny wave. Five years in York's head and company has given him slightly more human and civil Mannerisims. Though being more civil than York isn't all that hard right now.

"Traitor." He mutters, shoulders sagging.

[unrecovered]

"A week?" Wash isn't sure if that verdict is a result of Chief not knowing him well enough yet to read him accurately or if he really did look that bad a few days ago. It might be a combination of both.

And then Delta shows up and greets him, and Wash shifts his attention to the AI, as evidently it's York's turn to Not Handle Things. It's odd, to say the least, to be holding a conversation with someone that you definitely killed a few years ago, but that's not something Wash plans on addressing right now (or ever). "Hey, Delta. Better than I did a few days ago." That wasn't exactly a high bar, but at least it's the truth.

[relativityspeaking]

Kid Quantum sits at her desk, for the moment ignoring the other people -- and their metaphorical elephant -- in the room. She makes no secret of the fact that she's pulled up security footage from the cafeteria and is watching it, though there doesn't seem to be sound. When she's seen up to the point that she arrives, she closes the window with a flick of her fingers and finally looks at Wash and York.

"Tell me what happened," she says. "Freelancer first, then Locksmith. If you don't believe that you can do so without throwing punches like a couple of squajs, I can have Dr. Ryk'rr come in to mediate."

[unrecovered]

Wash sits ramrod straight on the right side of the office, poker face firmly in place - a position taken without quarrel. He'd been sorely tempted to take the left chair, but when push came to shove, he respected Kid Q more than he wanted to set York off again. Instead, he watched the video, playing back the audio in his mind. The upside of an eidetic memory is that he remembers the conversation perfectly; the downside of an eidetic memory is that he remembers the conversation perfectly.

He'd flown off the handle first. He was still angry at York from days ago - he was still angry at York from years ago - and he hadn't had nearly as good a handle on it as he'd told himself he had. York's still an asshole - that hasn't changed, and it probably won't ever change - but that doesn't make the fight any less Wash's fault.

Admitting that in front of York is the absolute last thing he wants to do right now. He wants time to himself, to go off and be alone to sulk and be angry- but no, they're here now, and he can't well lie with the footage right in front of him, plus the whole idea of respect...

"I ran into Locksmith in the cafeteria," he starts, trying not to hesitate at the name. York's success rate with locks was fucking abysmal on larger-scale missions and he'd still gone with Locksmith? Christ. "We have a...history together. I thought we could have a conversation; I was wrong." And here he'd thought Locksmith was going to be the difficult part of the conversation. Nope, it was definitely that little three-word admission. "I got upset, we both escalated, and..." He gestures at her now silent omnicom. "You saw what happened."

[isthisapidge]

Pidge hit the cafeteria before she settled into the nature deck with her laptop, a baggy of fruit and some veggie soup in a cup, which was the first thing she saw on the menu that was warm.

And then it turns out that she doesn't really want any of it. She's taken a few sips of the soup but she's left most of what she has untouched. Mostly, she just wants to work. She wants to stop...all of this. No more moles. No more Murderworlds.

Maybe this has just the freebee, the introduction to everything she's up against as a member of Legion. It's a lot different than Voltron, something she was really just starting to learn in the first place.

And when she spots Wash, as she has to pack up and move her solar powered battery when the artificial sun shifts, she suspects he's not doing too well, which isn't even that much of a deduction because she knows what "not doing too well" looks like for a person like himself.

"Hi Wash," she says, and hopes her voice doesn't sound too quiet.

[unrecovered]

He'd known she was there for a while - the clicking of a keyboard sticks out from the usual soundscape on this part of the nature deck, and of course he'd honed in on it. It's not Pidge's first time out here, either - she must find Chief's part of the deck as relaxing - or just distracting - as he does.

"Hey," he replies, voice just as quiet. He hasn't seen her since yesterday, when he'd made sure she was still alive at the Legion's impromptu reunion and triage station; before that, the last time he'd seen her had been after their fight with Foxface the day before. (Jesus Christ that was only two days ago- and he's not thinking about that right now.) "How are you holding up?"

[isthisapidge]

So many people use keyboards around here that it might not occur to Pidge that she stands out, even in this forested area. The forest is so easy to get lost in, just find a place to hide and find peace.

"I'm OK. I've been analyzing as much as I can about what happened to see what safeguards we can start using."

Meaning that she can't stop thinking about it.