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)
legionworld2017-09-01 06:25 pm
unrecovered) wrote in legionworld2017-09-01 06:25 pm
Entry tags:
Will you feel better? [Open]
Who| Wash and whoever comes across him
What| The robot zombie apocalypse did not treat Wash well, and he's due for a breakdown.
Where| All over Legion World
When| A few days after Resistance Is Futile/An Eye for An Eye
Warnings/Notes| Expect mentions of violence and also a full-on emotional breakdown, because Wash.
Before
To say it's been a rough few days would be one hell of an understatement. At least things are getting better - Legion World is starting to return to normal, everyone who got infected by the zombie plague has been cured, and things are starting to settle.
Wash feels like that return to normality has left him behind - when he bothers to think about his feelings, that is.
Nobody slept much during the crisis, but now, days later, he still hasn't really slept. Or eaten much. Or come out of crisis mode at all. He's done this before - gone from crisis to crisis, functioned for days on end through disaster or (more often) war - and he knows that coming down will eventually involve taking a good look at his own actions and coming to terms with them, and that means probing the edges of the fresh pair of (small, bullet-shaped) holes in his soul and-
He can't. He can't do it. The last bit of stubbornness that's been keeping him going wavers every time he gets close, and he's not prepared to deal with that collapse yet.
So he distracts himself as best he can, whether that means getting a snack from the mess hall, helping clean up some of the mess left over from the crisis, or wandering through the biomes on the habitat deck. Anything that keeps him busy. Anything that keeps him out of armor and off of active duty, because he knows he can't trust himself right now. Anything that keeps him from having to think about the past few days.
Breakdown (Closed to Chief)
There comes a point where he just can't do it anymore. He's gone for too long, pushed himself too far, stopped caring about just how close he's gotten to his own limits and whether he's overstepped them or not. He's heading for a breakdown, but he's still running from it for as long as he can.
When he looks at the Legion staffer next to him in the mess hall and sees a bullet hole in her head, he knows it's caught up to him. He blinks, and the hole is gone. Blinks again, and it's back. She frowns, concerned, and asks if he's okay; he makes some paper-thin excuse and leaves.
It's been a long time since he's hallucinated, even one as small as that one. This is bad. He can't run anymore.
So he makes his way down to the habitat deck, to the biome he's just about adopted as his own even though it isn't, only stopping when he hits the tree line before the lakeshore. He sits down, back against a tree, and burrows into his hoodie, pulling his hood up and over his face as far as it will go. If he knows he's going to break, he can at least do it in private.
After
He feels better. That's what's most surprising about all this - that going to pieces was a step forward instead of being a loss of self. Amazing what consistent therapy will do.
He's not completely back to himself yet - he still feels fragile, like the wrong word or look will rattle him back down to base components again, but in spite of that he doesn't feel vulnerable. It's an odd state of being, and it's not nearly enough to get him to hide himself away and rest yet. There's still work to be done. He can still be helping.
But now he's standing a little straighter, and making eye contact, and keeping up his half of a conversation instead of trying to end it - the exact opposite of everything he was doing just an hour or so ago.
What| The robot zombie apocalypse did not treat Wash well, and he's due for a breakdown.
Where| All over Legion World
When| A few days after Resistance Is Futile/An Eye for An Eye
Warnings/Notes| Expect mentions of violence and also a full-on emotional breakdown, because Wash.
Before
To say it's been a rough few days would be one hell of an understatement. At least things are getting better - Legion World is starting to return to normal, everyone who got infected by the zombie plague has been cured, and things are starting to settle.
Wash feels like that return to normality has left him behind - when he bothers to think about his feelings, that is.
Nobody slept much during the crisis, but now, days later, he still hasn't really slept. Or eaten much. Or come out of crisis mode at all. He's done this before - gone from crisis to crisis, functioned for days on end through disaster or (more often) war - and he knows that coming down will eventually involve taking a good look at his own actions and coming to terms with them, and that means probing the edges of the fresh pair of (small, bullet-shaped) holes in his soul and-
He can't. He can't do it. The last bit of stubbornness that's been keeping him going wavers every time he gets close, and he's not prepared to deal with that collapse yet.
So he distracts himself as best he can, whether that means getting a snack from the mess hall, helping clean up some of the mess left over from the crisis, or wandering through the biomes on the habitat deck. Anything that keeps him busy. Anything that keeps him out of armor and off of active duty, because he knows he can't trust himself right now. Anything that keeps him from having to think about the past few days.
Breakdown (Closed to Chief)
There comes a point where he just can't do it anymore. He's gone for too long, pushed himself too far, stopped caring about just how close he's gotten to his own limits and whether he's overstepped them or not. He's heading for a breakdown, but he's still running from it for as long as he can.
When he looks at the Legion staffer next to him in the mess hall and sees a bullet hole in her head, he knows it's caught up to him. He blinks, and the hole is gone. Blinks again, and it's back. She frowns, concerned, and asks if he's okay; he makes some paper-thin excuse and leaves.
It's been a long time since he's hallucinated, even one as small as that one. This is bad. He can't run anymore.
So he makes his way down to the habitat deck, to the biome he's just about adopted as his own even though it isn't, only stopping when he hits the tree line before the lakeshore. He sits down, back against a tree, and burrows into his hoodie, pulling his hood up and over his face as far as it will go. If he knows he's going to break, he can at least do it in private.
After
He feels better. That's what's most surprising about all this - that going to pieces was a step forward instead of being a loss of self. Amazing what consistent therapy will do.
He's not completely back to himself yet - he still feels fragile, like the wrong word or look will rattle him back down to base components again, but in spite of that he doesn't feel vulnerable. It's an odd state of being, and it's not nearly enough to get him to hide himself away and rest yet. There's still work to be done. He can still be helping.
But now he's standing a little straighter, and making eye contact, and keeping up his half of a conversation instead of trying to end it - the exact opposite of everything he was doing just an hour or so ago.
no subject
He props his elbows on the porch, lean and worried but very much not prying. It's not his place to pry and this time? He remembers that. Wash is a grown ass man, he'll handle it on his terms. In York's territory is probably not where he'd choose. "She's figuring out gliding from one perch to another and it's pretty damn adorable."