legionworld | Un-Reanimated [Open]

Entry tags:

Un-Reanimated [Open]

Who| Pidge, anyone who wants to visit
What| Pidge recovers from being a zombie. Also dying.
Where| Medbay
When| After Resistance is Futile
Warnings/Notes| Warnings for trauma, both physical and emotional

The second thing Pidge did when she woke up was fall back on the bed and cry.

The first thing was to lurch out of bed and check her face on the nearest reflective surface, feeling all over for damage. She was shot. In the face. Wash shot her. It was one of the only coherent memories she had from being assimilated. When he and Dipper ran out of the room, she was writing around, banging her head on the floor as the nanites...repaired her. Maybe she was never going to die in the first place, and now she's OK.

Everything's OK.

...She cries anyway.

Pidge lets herself sob, laying flat on the medbay bed with her face in her hands. She cries because she was turned into a zombie. She cries because she probably hurt people while it happened. She cries because she was shot and she cries because it was Wash that had to do it. She cries because she almost lost everything, even things she didn't know she had until it came time to almost lose it. She cries because her feelings for Dipper had to be resolved in a big hurry and, honestly, she kind of failed? She cries because she saved his life and probably his mind too.

And then she stops crying because she's starting to feel a bit like a crybaby.

Part of her just wants to sleep, to recover, to banish the whole thing into the realm of Bad Dreams where they can't hurt her. Can hurt her less? Whichever. But her brain has kicked into hyperdrive. Sleep is probably just not going to happen until she sees the people she needs to see.

Not that she feels well enough to get up and look for them. Her legs have about exhausted their strength stumbling out of bed and back, and she knows she looks terrible, pale, eyes all bloodshot, her hair mussed and, yeah, that's definitely a knot on the back of her head.

She lays back down, pulling the covers up to her chest. Hopefully it's still visiting hours.

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When Dipper comes in, he still has a cookie in his mouth, a to-go bag from the Mess Hall in one hand, and a box of chocolate chip cookies tucked under the other. (The last one is for her, because he figures being turned into a robot probably will have given her an appetite and Dr Gym'll is a grouch about sweets in the Medbay). The nurses had told him to get some rest, which he'd completely ignored (hence the bags under his eyes) but hunger was a much harder urge to ignore. He'd barely eaten over the last day or so. And he figured he wouldn't be gone long. She'd probably still be asleep by the time he got back.

Except she's wide awake when he gets there.

"Mmph!" Who knows what the exclamation is supposed to be, but making it causes the cookie to break off in his mouth and fall on the floor. For a second he just looks at it in disappointment because he'd really wanted the cookie, and then he looks back at her and goes, "Mmm!"

With the hand of the arm that has cookies under it, he holds up a finger to say, 'Hold on one second' and frantically chews and swallows.

He tosses both the bag and the box of cookies onto one of the chairs, picks up the fallen cookie from the floor with his teke and tosses it in the trash, and then scrambles into the chair at the side of her bed, expression concerned.

"Hey. How are you feeling?"

Edited 2017-09-01 16:08 (UTC)

She wants to be happy to see him. She is happy to see him! But he's been the subject of about 75% percent of the confusing feelings she's been dealing with before and after becoming a zombie. Relief, as far as she can tell, is the strongest emotion she's feeling right at the moment.

He survived. Even after he went back to the lab for her after he saw her be swarmed. Like a hero. Also kind of like an idiot. She remembers because she...almost attacked him, she saw him as prey, and then-

Is she overcome with joy or does she want to hide under the bed?

He loses his cookie, and it makes her chuckle. OK, it must be the former. She considers his question for a moment, and then noncommittally shrugs.

"...Better? Just sore and tired, I guess." And emotional, but he doesn't need to know that. "What about you?"

"I'm fine."

He didn't freak the hell out and completely shut his emotions down for a little while or anything. Nope. He totally just engaged in a normal healthy grief process.

"I've done the whole zombie thing before," he says, with an awkward shrug. "It was the shambling corpse kind, and there were a lot more exploding heads involved, but same general id--"

He stops mid-sentence, cringing at how it sounds. And just for a moment, the image of her head reeling back as Wash's bullet hit it is all he can see.

"Bad wording," he grinds out between gritted teeth, trying to will the invasive mental image away. "Stupid wording."

Nothing with heads. They weren't going to talk about any injuries involving heads. No heads.

He rambles.

"I just meant it was easier then. My sister was there, and so was my Grunkle Stan, and we defeated them with karaoke."

Pidge flinches like she's been struck. It's in her head too, just on the other end of it. She's about to hurt Dipper and Wash raises the gun and-

She breaks eye-contact with him, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. "Wow...if this is your 'fine,' I'd hate to see what your 'not great' looks like."

Not that she doesn't really want to follow up on the "karaoke" thing. Sometimes it feels like every single story Dipper has sounds like a classic horror film right up until the last detail, when it turns into a cartoon. But right now is very much not the time, and when she opens her eyes to look at him again after a shaking breath, her face is soft, almost pleading.

"...We really need to talk."

Edited 2017-09-03 05:06 (UTC)

More and more it feels like she can see right through him, and while it's uncomfortable sometimes, it also feels very good just...being understood.

But then she says five words he really was hoping to not hear.

He completely avoids her gaze and rambles.

"Talking? We're already talking, we don't need to talk if we're already talking, right? We can just talk about stuff. All kinds of stuff. Stuff that's totally unrelated to everything that's happened. Why don't we watch a stupid movie or something?"

If (NERVOUS) then (RAMBLE) seems to be hard-coded into both of them. It's weird for her to be on the other side of it.

"You know what I mean!" She snaps. "About...what you said back in the lab..."

Edited 2017-09-03 16:35 (UTC)

"I know I said some stuff, but we don't need to talk about it right now, right? I mean, you just woke up, you're still in the Medbay. I bet you're hungry, you're probably hungry, so why don't I go and get you something to eat?"

His face is turning beet red now and he stands up.

"We can talk about everything later. Or never. Never's good."

"Dippper!"

Pidge throws her hands up, palms out, in a gesture that screams Are you serious?!

"You-you dropped the 'I like you' bomb and now you're just going to pretend like it didn't happen?!"

"I'm not pretending it didn't happen! I'm just suggesting we don't talk about it until later. Or never."

He starts inching towards the door.

"Now isn't a good time. Everything was all crazy and we should just use this time to decompress. Or something. They have pudding somewhere around Medbay, why don't I go find the pudding stash?"

And maybe by the time he's back, she'll have gotten over this whole, 'Let's talk about feelings' thing.

So, with that, he bolts.

Edited 2017-09-04 02:17 (UTC)

"Dipper!"

Her legs are just a little too weak to get out of bed before he's gone, so she settles back with her head in her hands. Well, she's not upset by the memory of being shot anymore because she has to be aggravated with him now.

Well, fine. Fine. If he's coming back then she can wait. Lucky for him she...actually is pretty hungry.

He wants to go back, he really, really wants to and he feels like a giant jerk for this, but it's been a horrible few days and he doesn't want to do the whole "I only see you as a friend" song and dance right now. It's already a given, something he can easily accept. He doesn't need to hear it actually being said.

He wants to just...just focus on the relief of her being okay.

So when he comes back, he hands her the pudding and a spoon, and then he's off again.

"Pudding. I found it. But, you know, it's kind of getting late, I'll see you tomorrow, byyye."

And he's gone again, fully aware of the fact that he's a giant, terrible wuss. But after he takes some time to get over how awkward he feels, he can see her tomorrow and hopefully not run off that time, right?

He needs to know.

They've all been briefed - about the state of the Brainiacs, about the cure, about their fellow Legionnaires who had been infected - but Wash still needs to see with his own two eyes that Pidge is back on Legion World and back to normal. He needs something to layer over his last memory of her. He makes it to her room in medbay and stops just outside the door, trying in vain to gather himself well enough to handle this, and-

She's crying. She's crying like the goddamn world is ending - but hers had for a while there, and part of it was his doing, and he-

He-

He turns and leaves, long even strides hiding the fact that his hands are shaking and he's about to go to pieces if he doesn't get a handle on himself right now, and he's not sure if he can do that at all, let alone with Pidge crying within earshot.

It's hours before he comes back. He'd needed them - needed the time to distract himself, to pull himself together, to bury guilt and patch over the goddamn hole in his soul that shooting her had torn, to shore himself up well enough to support her, because this isn't the first time he's dealt with trauma like this (not quite like this, he'd never had to shoot a kid- goddammit stop it-), and while he may not be stable enough to handle much right now, he can at least check in on Pidge and make sure she's okay, or as close to okay as any of them are going to get right now.

(Closer than him, at least.)

He knocks on her doorframe but doesn't enter - the last thing he wants to do is traumatize her more by getting too close too soon. "Hey."

Edited 2017-09-03 02:57 (UTC)

Wash.

She knows it's not his fault, that there's no reason to be angry at her, and she's not. She's absolutely not. But she also knows that the moment she sees him, she'll also see his gun and hear the shots and feel-

She needs a moment. A deep breath to brace herself. She can't imagine what he's feeling right now, but if it's half as bad as she's feeling (it's probably exactly as bad as she's feeling), then they need to see each other and move on from this.

"Hey. Come in."

That's a look he recognizes - he's worn it too often not to. That's a flashback- that's a trigger-

What little stability he's managed to scrape together quails, and it's all he can do not to cut and run. Not that he blames her for any of this - he's the one that shot her, after all.

(It's not easy to think about. It will never be easy to think about.)

But she gathers herself, and so does he, and he comes in and sits in the chair furthest from the bed, putting himself out of arm's reach of her. He has no idea if she'll feel safer with him unable to touch her, but it's worth a try.

"How are you holding up?"

Go away, go back...It's over now, you can stop thinking about it.

That is way easier to think to to make happen, but when Pidge opens her eyes, it's just Wash. Sitting all the way down the bed, which...kind of makes her heart sink. She wanted him there but he's deliberately putting distance between them and she doesn't want to think about why that is.

"I'm OK. I'm sore and tired, but I'll be back on my feet in a day or two. What about you?"

"I'm doing okay." It's a brazen, baldfaced lie, but the last thing Wash wants to do is saddle Pidge with his problems - not when he's caused some of hers. He's allowed to look exhausted after several days of hell missions - she doesn't need to know that his lack of sleep has really been caused by fresh trauma. "I'm just glad it's over for now."

"You're the second person to tell me he's OK when I can see it's not true."

He looks terrible and he has to know he looks terrible. She's been seriously concerned about him since she woke up and the fact that he's sitting so far away and-

-And he hasn't even offered her a hug. She's a little shocked to realize how much she's come to expect that from him and how bad it feels when that option is off the table.

"Only the second?" His tone is wry, but he doesn't try for a smile - he knows he'll never make it.

"It's been you, Dipper and the Easter Bunny so far. And Bunny was just fine."

She looks him in the eye for as long as he'll let her and says the only thing she can think to at this point.

"It wasn't your fault, Wash."

Dipper still being messed up isn't good news, but it's still good to know, and he files it away for later.

He holds eye contact, and...oh. Somehow, he's not surprised to hear that from Pidge, and in some aspects, she's not wrong. "I know." His tone is mild and controlled, like he's not falling to pieces on the inside. The situation had already gone to hell by the time Dipper had come looking for him; there's nothing he could have done to change that. But...

"But I still made the decision, and I still took the shot." And he'd done both with a hope that Pidge could be cured and that her body wouldn't be destroyed beyond repair, but with no guarantee of either. It's a goddamn miracle they'd managed both; without either, he would have ended her life then and there. "The situation not being my fault doesn't change that."

"No, but...I made the decision to stay behind. I made the decision to send Dipper out of there while I faced the horde on my own. You didn't...put us in that position."

She knows she's not responsible either, not really, but if what she's feeling isn't guilt then she doesn't know what label to put on it.

"I know." He's not disagreeing with her on any of this; that said, while he knows what her angle is, he's not quite sure where she's going with this. "You made the best decisions you could in a bad situation. So did I. That's war." It's all terribly matter-of-fact. "Knowing all of that doesn't change the outcome - we still have to deal with the consequences."

"I know...but it's just not fair."

She feels like she's about to start crying again. She wants to make things better for both of them, but she can't, she just can't-

With a sob, she throws off the blankets, gets out of bed, and throws her arms around him.

"I'm so sorry, Wash!"

Oh.

Evidently putting himself outside of arm's reach had been the exact wrong thing to do. He starts for a moment, then wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his lap, holding her tightly. He'd hurt her - he'd fucking shot her - and she still wants him close-

The only thing that keeps him from collapsing completely is sheer stubbornness. He's not allowed to fall apart right now because Pidge needs him here and he is not letting her down again. "You have nothing to be sorry about. You did everything you could - no one can fault you for that."

She's completely sick of crying, so she swallows around the lump in her throat, wipes her eyes with her thumb, and just lets herself be held. She wants Wash to be OK so badly, but it's impossible to tell how bad it is from his controlled tone.

Yeah, OK, she knows it's bad, but he's trying to hide it from her. It's already so hard to know what to do.

"I know, but...I'm sorry it even happened at all."

She's trying to make him feel better. He knows that, but it's just not hitting home. He doesn't want her apology or her sadness at the situation - he wants...

He pulls back instinctively from that train of thought. He's too fragile to pursue it now, or possibly for a while. What matters now is making sure Pidge is okay, and he can't do that if he's falling apart himself. "So am I," he says quietly, "but you know that doesn't make it your fault. You did what you had to."

"So did you."

She's out of comforting words, no, just out of words. Burying her face in his chest and just breathing for awhile seems like the only next step. She just...needs him to know that she doesn't want anything to change between them.

"I know." He holds her gently, stroking her hair. He's out of words himself; hopefully he won't need them. Hopefully, for now, this will be enough.

Hopefully.

This is not something Bunny's used to doing, any of it - talking to teenagers, visiting hospitals to talk to teenagers, just bringing candy to a kid instead of hiding it for them - this is all outside the way he's been operating for centuries.

But if this place took a lot of power from him, it gave him other means to protect kids. Bringing candy to a likely traumatized teen in the hospital might not protect her from anything, but - it's still something he has the chance to do, and he's not going to get many other chances to do it, if things go well and he goes back to his intangible, invisible usual Guardianship.

His hab has been set up with everything he needs to make chocolate, so he hasn't had to break into the galley this time to get a basket together for Pidge. The basket itself is handmade, living vines twined into the dry wicker. The chocolate eggs are all as intricate and beautiful as the one he first made for her, each one a jewel to look at, their smell mingling with the fragrance of dry sweetgrass bedding, arranged in a display of candied violets and lavender.

It's not until he's on the way to deliver the gift that he realizes he overlooked something, and the first thing he does after knocking gently on the door to Pidge's room is ask the question -

"Ought to have asked earlier - any flower you're allergic to?"

"Just hay-fever, don't worry," she laughs.

She wasn't expecting Bunny, but he's a welcome surprise. It's nice to talk to someone she doesn't have any baggage with. Good thing he doesn't hold the whole "her not believing him" thing against her.

"It's beautiful, thank you!" She graciously accepts the basket, enjoying the sweet scents that now masks the slightly chemical smell of the medbay. It...helps. It helps a lot. It doesn't fix anything, but it helps.

"Now that sounds like a trial," Bunny chuckles, handing her the basket and crouching comfortably at Pidge's bedside. "Glad I never had to contend with that one."

Hayfever would really get in the way of being a nature spirit.

"You're welcome." Hey, that's nice. He doesn't get to say that a lot. "How're you holding up?" he asks, when the basket is handed over. "Yer mates been to visit you already? They tire you out much?"

Edited 2017-09-04 07:39 (UTC)

He definitely has the bedside manner of a holiday icon. It's nice, like being a kid getting visited by a superhero except she's not 5 and he's not a guy in a costume.

"My...friend Dipper came in, but he ran away before I could really talk to him."
The upset shows all over her face. Dipper going out of his way to avoid her after everything he said...well, it hurts in a way she's never really felt before.

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Un-Reanimated [Open]

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