The Sad Blanket Tour [Open]

[unrecovered]

Who| Wash and whoever else wants to join in
What| Those last two missions were terrible, and Wash is checking in on his friends to make sure they're okay and nudge them in that direction if they're not
Where| All over the ship
When| After Silent Horizon and No Sanity Clause; the rest of the afternoon/evening after Kid Q's briefing
Warnings/Notes| This is mostly for Wash's extant CR, but I'm absolutely down for him meeting new people. He's not going to turn anyone away right now, after all. Also, behold the mighty planning spreadsheet.

It has been, to put it lightly, a shitty day.

They'd beaten the Joker but lost one of their own. Half the team had been through what sounded like literal hell. Clown in a fridge victory aside, things hadn't gone well for anyone.

So, once Wash had gotten himself out of medical with a promise not to do anything strenuous until he'd healed completely, he'd hunted down as many blankets as he could find and gone looking for his teammates. He couldn't fix what had happened, but at least he could try to help.

Comments

Chief | In medical, right after the mission

[unrecovered]

[unrecovered]

Wash is lying facedown on a bed, stripped to the waist, with his back and shoulders bandaged. The surgery to remove the smaller pieces of glass from his back wasn't long or invasive; that said, given that some of them had started to heal over thanks to his healing factor, it was a little more complicated than just pulling them out with tweezers and calling it a day. His one insistence this time around was minimal painkillers. The last thing he needs to do is lose his self-control again, and painkillers wipe that out pretty thoroughly.

That means that, by the time the surgery is over and he's recovering, they're starting to wear off, and that is anything but fun. His options are being in pain and being lucid or being out of pain and out of it; given what happened last time he was out of it in a hospital bed, he opts for the pain. It's nothing new. He'll live with it.

All told, he's in a great mood. Just wonderful.

[prettycoolguy]

The Master Chief is, at least theoretically, a smart person who learns from experience. This is why he hesitates on the threshold before approaching Wash. The last time he did this, they almost stopped being friends.

...But they talked. It's fine now. The Chief's suit may have been fucked up on Cargg, but he himself is much better off than he was after the ambush. There's no reason for Wash to get upset at him for being up and about, right?

The Spartan sinks down into a chair next to Wash's bed. He's not tired, not really. If anything, he's still wired for a fight. It's just that sitting down makes it a bit easier for Wash to look at him.

"Hey."

He's probably never going to be good at starting conversations.

[unrecovered]

Wash lifts his head - ow fuck dammit - enough to turn it to see the Chief, then rests his cheek back on the bed. Chief isn't moving like he's injured, which is either good news or a blatant lie. Still, he's here, and Wash is lucid. Better, right?

"Well, that sucked."

[prettycoolguy]

A succinct understatement. The Chief nods. "Yes."

Wash is lucid, this time. And not as badly injured. Two improved variables.

"Came down to see if they'd brought you back from being a pincushion," says the Chief.

That's the other thing that's different, this time. He knows Wash well enough to feel like this is appropriate. So much went wrong this mission on both sides, but for a moment it just seems important to appreciate that one of his friends is going to be alright.

[unrecovered]

"Yeah, now I'm a sieve," Wash deadpans in reply. "They tell me it's an upgrade." Pain has never stopped Wash from saying stupid shit, and it's not about to start now.

[prettycoolguy]

The Chief shakes his head.

"Thought I got one, but I've been told the acid wash look isn't fashionable on armor right now. Heads up."

Haha, right?

[unrecovered]

That explains why Chief is out of armor, and also holy shit. How close did they come to having more than one fatality on this mission?

(They had a fatality on this mission. Don't- don't think about that.)

"Wish I'd known that an hour ago," he says, tone light. "I probably wouldn't be down a helmet."

Haha, indeed.

[prettycoolguy]

"Nobody should ask us why we keep them, after that," says the Chief. He has his light uniform, it's a concession that not all parts of life are amenable to a half ton of Mjolnir, but it's still a sore point with him.

"Cortana's not happy, but we've done worse." Well. Probably. The important thing is he's telling Wash he's seen Cortana. And if course he has.

"No deaths in the Silent Horizon, but most of the team came back injured. Kid Q's preparing a debrief." The Chief is trying to be unconcerned here, but it's still there. He should have been there with Cortana. It's not a rational regret, the team on Cargg needed him just as much, but the impulse is there all the same.

[unrecovered]

"You've done worse." Than getting hit with acid. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

As for the Silent Horizon...well. "No deaths doesn't mean everything's fine," Wash points out, "especially with our track record. They were pretty much going into a horror movie setup. Did Cortana tell you what happened on the mission?"

[prettycoolguy]

At "somehow, I'm not surprised," the corner of the Chief's mouth quirks up, just a little. It amuses him that Wash understands.

But it's gone quickly. This conversation is serious now.

"She did. They encountered an..." what word do you even use for that? "Entity. It communicated telepathically with the ship's crew and drove them crazy. Turned them into monsters."

...Yeah.

"It tried to do the same thing to the Legionnaires."

He doesn't want to step on Kid Q's toes by going to far into it, and he doesn't want to work Wash up while he's still here in medical. But he's also not going to lie.

[unrecovered]

Getting even the smallest smile from Chief is a victory. Even though it's gone in the next moment, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Wash's light mood disappears as Chief keeps talking. He'd said it was a horror movie setup, but that didn't mean he'd been expecting an actual horror movie. "When she said it turned them into monsters - is that figurative or literal?"

[prettycoolguy]

The Chief's entire reply is a significant look. Wash knows him, and he trusts that Wash will pick it up. He's a literal sort, he's usually surrounded by ridiculous and terrible things, the worse answer here fits the pattern.

It has been a day for this entire team.

[unrecovered]

If it had been figurative, Chief would have confirmed that. The look on his face means that it's literal. He exhales slowly and squeezes his eyes shut. "Christ."

That's all he has right now. It's going to take a little time to process.

[prettycoolguy]

The Chief nods, and is silent for a moment. It's both because Wash has to take that in, and because he's debating over something.

"It was... similar to something we faced before."

There. More classified information spilled. It's so easy to do, once one starts.

[unrecovered]

Funny what complete trust in a person will do.

"Let me guess: it's the worse thing you just mentioned."

He doesn't open his eyes yet. He's not sure he wants to.

[prettycoolguy]

"Parasitic hive mind the Forerunners left locked up. It got loose during the war. People had enough to worry about with the Covenant, it was contained and they didn't need to know."

That's the short version.

"Cortana fought it. It... hurt her. Bad."

[unrecovered]

Wash opens his eyes and just. Stares blankly. It's one thing to find space cthulu in a dimension of superheroes; it's another thing entirely to learn that its cousin is a hell of a lot closer to home than he'd imagined. "You know," he finally says, "I'm not sure if that's unique to your dimension or just highly classified in mine, and I'm not sure I want to find out."

There's something in that last sentence that tastes like rampancy, and that is not good, to say the least. "Did she recover?"

[prettycoolguy]

In response to the question of whether or not the Gravemind exists in Wash's homeworld, the Chief shrugs one shoulder. Maybe. Maybe not. It would be nicer for them if it weren't there. It would also open up tons of alternate history questions, but probably be nicer.

As for Cortana...

"In my timeline, Cortana lived a complete lifespan for a smart AI," he says. A nice way of saying she reached her operational limits and began to descend into madness, but he hates to think of it that way.

"More than that is personal. But I'm worried about her."

She'd been in the prime of her life when she fought the Gravemind, and come back from it shaken. That she made it past her seven years was more testament to Cortana's strength of will than to her having taken no permanent damage.