legionworld | The Sad Blanket Tour [Open]

Entry tags:

The Sad Blanket Tour [Open]

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"So you came straight from hell and have been sitting here for a few hours." She's jumpy and she's probably traumatized. "Time for a break."

"What? No, I have too much work to do!" This is what makes sense to her right now and what she wants to do.

Even as her breathing gets heavier and more erratic, it's what she's going to keep doing.

Not if he has anything to say about it. "Nope. Overruled." He tucks the blankets under one arm and wraps the other around her waist, slinging her up and over his shoulder, her chest hanging over his back. He adjusts his grip to clamp an arm around her knees to prevent her from kicking him in protest.

Of course, she can still pound on his still-healing back, and while it'll probably hurt like a bitch, it won't stop him.

He gets to his feet and sets off down the hall.

"Whoa!"

Suddenly Pidge is up in the air and slung over Wash's back. She feels the sting of humiliation in her throat and her cheeks go hot, but she can give Wash one chance to let her go.

"Put me down. I mean it."

A beat. He's not putting her down.

"Now, Wash!" She starts pounding on his back. "Let me go!"

He makes a pained noise that he's not proud of as the first few blows land and manages to clamp it down. He's dealt with worse pain before, and now he's on a mission. He'll be fine. "Why?" he demands. "So you can go back to your lab, read the same information a thousand times hoping that you can find something you missed the first time, which - spoilers - there won't be anything, beat yourself up anyway for not knowing something you couldn't have known, and exhaust yourself? Forget it. You need a break."

Luckily, Legionnaire quarters aren't too far away. Wash keys open the door to his, briefly pauses to disable the Reaper traps, and closes the door behind him. Only then does he set Pidge back on her feet.

From his pillow on the bed, DC yawns widely and meows a very loud greeting.

"There is, Wash! There's something there, I'm sure of it. I just need to track it down!" She's tired and feels humiliated by him and she's going to argue this longer and harder than she would otherwise.

She stands where he put her, though she'd really rather be playing with his cat. It still kind of blows her mind that Wash is a cat-lover. She wants to curl up with the cat, and ignore him, like she often does when people become overwhelming.

DC would at least sit on her lap while she worked.

Wash just raises an eyebrow and gives her a pointed look. If she wants an argument, she's not getting it from him - not when he's pretty much already gotten his way. (Might might not always make right, but it does make a compelling argument sometimes.)

"I don't think you've met DC," he says instead, gesturing to the kitten, who meows again. That's him! He knows his name! Hi!

"Wash."

There's a lot of warning packed into that word. Don't do this to her. Don't treat her like a little kid. Respect her and her work. Talk to her. Engage with her, for god's sake!

"Did you bring me here for a reason, or can I go?" There must have been a reason he brought her here instead of her own quarters.

So much for distraction tactics. "I brought you here because you need to take a break," he says, meeting her gaze. "I've seen what happens when people as smart as you obsess over tragedy. You don't rest, you hit the same data over and over until your eyes cross, you get tired, and you convince yourself that desperate decisions are the right ones." And occasionally you get government funding and ruin the lives of forty-nine people in your care, though there's very little chance of Pidge managing that here. "I'm trying to keep you from doing that to yourself. If you want to look at the data again, fine, but do it with fresh eyes. Give yourself a chance to rest first."

From the bed, DC yowls. There's two people in here and neither of them are paying any attention to him and that's just rude.

Pidge wants to argue, but...she can't say he's wrong, exactly, and she has to admit it. She's not happy about it, but she's not really happy about anything right now.

"...Fine." She turns her attention to the cat again, and sits down on the bed next to it, immediatelly earning a fuzzy head pushing under her hand for a stroke. "I've always been more of a dog person."

But DC is fuzzy and warm, so he'll do.

"And here you are, petting my cat." It's blithe and toothless - cat people versus dog people, who cares - but it's something harmless to say, and it's not an argument over whether Pidge needs to sit down and rest. He'll take it.

There is now a person with a lap on the bed and that is much better than the pillow! DC hops up into Pidge's lap, pushing his head against her stomach. Peeeeeeet himmmmmmm.

A blithe remark gets a blithe smile, tiny as it is. She moves from head rubs to full on petting, right to the tip of the tail. DC purrs furiously and facilitates his rubbing by stretching his head into her hand as she goes to in to pet him again, so totally unlike her dog or the mice that-

OK, that really wasn't where she wanted to go with her train of thought, and her smile falters. The Faceless tried to twist something she's longed for over a year into something horrible to demoralize her, her dog included. The only reason it didn't try to use Team Voltron was because it didn't get the chance. Without the data to stare at, the thoughts she was trying to push away are hitting her full force.

Her tear drips onto DC's head. She kind of thought she was too tired to cry, but what do you know...

Wash leans gingerly against the wall, closes his eyes, and takes a moment to breathe. Pidge is petting DC - it's hard to argue with an insistently affectionate kitten, after all - and for the moment, things are okay. He'll take it.

DC meows loudly and shakes his head as the tear hits it. Stop that! He doesn't like being wet!

The meowing catches Wash's attention, and he looks up to see- well. So much for things being okay. He crosses the room and sits down next to Pidge, putting an arm gently around her shoulders. "It's okay. It's over."

Pidge sniffles and sobs, furiously scrubbing her eyes before wrapping an arm around Wash's trunk.

"But it's not over! I'm off the ship but it doesn't change that we fell into a trap or someone set it up!" He's the second person to say that to her, and while he probably means the ship, she just can't stop thinking of everything. The whole picture is where she has to live because of the way her brain is wired, and the fact that someone besides the big bad likely set this up as a trap just won't leave her alone.

She keeps one hand on DC's back to ground herself in something non-human and totally incapable of judgement.

He winces and stiffens, biting back a noise as Pidge wraps an arm around him, pressing into still-healing wounds. He takes a breath and lets it out. He's fine. He's fine. Focus on Pidge, who's just been through hell and is too goddamn smart to ignore the big picture.

"You're right - it's not going to be over until Chronoblivion is gone, and right now we have a mole on the ship." Which is something he's still struggling to come to terms with, thank you horribly justified paranoia. "But if you only look at the big picture, you'll drive yourself crazy. Break it down into steps. Step one, get off the Silent Horizon, which you did. Step two, give yourself enough time to rest and recover. Step three, take another look at the data. But step three can wait until at least tomorrow. Right now, you need to take care of yourself."

Pidge doesn't miss the way he goes stiff -she's holding on to him, after all- so she withdraws her arm. She doesn't need to ask what happened, she just knows he's hurt. He hid it well up until then, or maybe she was just wrapped up in her own thoughts.

Well, she still has a cat to pet.

"You're the second person to say that to me," she sniffs when she has a voice again. "I just...don't know how. I can't focus on one thing unless I'm focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else."

Wash keeps his arm around her. Just because he's in pain doesn't mean she doesn't still need the hug.

"Set a timer, then. Work for an hour, give yourself fifteen or twenty minutes to do something else, and actually take those breaks. You can focus longer if you don't wear yourself out at the beginning." It's hypocrisy on his end - he hyperfocuses badly at times - but that doesn't mean it won't work.

She lets herself sniffle against his chest for a minute more, just to be held with a fuzzy cat in her lap. It's good advice but right now she feels overwhelmed with everything she knows now, and maybe her work habits feel so hard to change because...everything feels like it's on the brink of falling apart.

"I'll try...There's just so much to do now." She wipes her eyes. "I'll...probably need your help."

He stays where he is, stroking her hair gently as she sniffles. He can't fix everything - can't even come close - but at least he can be here for her. That has to be worth something.

"That's part of our deal, isn't it? You come to training, I help in the lab." He ruffles her hair. "Though part of that is going to be making sure you take breaks now. I hope you know that."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Sad Blanket Tour [Open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject