lifeaftr | CLOTHING ADVENTURES

Wash.

[ Is he kidding? She turns to give him a disbelieving Look, the corners of her mouth threatening to pull up into a smile. ]

You were never a hardened military badass.

The way the sim soldiers acted, you'd never have believed otherwise.

[That keeps him from undercutting the moment with the obvious: that he put a bullet in South's brain and then slapped the nitro-cored slab of C4 against her armor to finish what he started. That he put a bullet in Donut's sternum and didn't expect him to get up from it again. That he was fully prepared to turn in his old A.I. to save his skin, and hunt down hapless sim troopers with the emptied husk of his best friend to do it.]

[Maybe badass was never on the table. But hardened certainly came to be a word for it.]

[But he smiles, as though none of it scratches the back of his head.]

[ She knows. Not all of it, but she knows he'd changed. That he'd killed South. That he'd convinced Church to sacrifice himself. Things that her Wash never, ever would have done.

But she hadn't seen it, and even if he's different now - colder, harder, more paranoid - knowing is different than believing. On some level, to her, he'll always be the same naive, earnest, slightly goofy Wash.

At least, she wants him to be.

She snorts, dropping the shorts to start searching aimlessly through the pile again. ]

I'm not sure they're the best judges of that.

Oh, no. They're not good judges of anything.

[The alacrity with which he says it is almost comical. None of them had much of a moral leg to stand on, considering that the way they first met was predicated on the fact that Caboose has team-killed his own leader a truly staggering number of times.]

But maybe that's why they manage to grow on you. They...don't really have any standards.

[ CT laughs, surprising herself. She'd only met the Blues - apart from Church - briefly, but honestly, it had been enough to know Wash is right. ]

That doesn't sound so bad, really. No standards.

[ No expectations. No judgement. No risk of letting anyone else down. ]

Sounds relaxing.

Relaxing? I dunno about relaxing.

[It's never really a dull moment with them, that's for sure. But sometimes it takes getting caught up in someone else's incredibly stupid and significantly less traumatic bullshit to start getting over your own.]

But it was a change. [And that had been, at the time, exactly what he needed.]

That sounds nice, too.

[ Any change had to be an improvement over Freelancer, right? She thinks of the Temerity, and frowns. Well. Maybe not any change. ]

...were you happy there?

With the Blues?

[How does he answer that? He hadn't been sure how to handle it, that forcible adoption into their ranks. It hadn't been an easy integration, either.]

[In between waking up with the taste of his own blood flooding his gums because he bit through his tongue, dealing with Tucker's grousing that he didn't get any fucking sleep because you motherfucking Freelancers are so goddamned loud, and ensuring Caboose didn't burn the entire damn base down in an effort to use the oven, there are moments that he feels...]

I think I might've been. [It's a difficult thing to recognize, and an adjustment, to say in the least; dialing yourself down from full-tilt survival to adjust to the fact that you're now just one part of a six-man team of idiots in a box canyon.]

Were you? In Thedas?

Yeah.

[ There's not even an instant of hesitation when she says it, but it's quiet, almost a sigh. CT looks back at the clothes again, not really seeing them as she thumbs at a shirt. ]

I didn't know I could be that happy.

[He's not sure he knew either. That he could be that happy - or that C.T. could, either.]

I hope you do again someday.

["Someday." Here, or...back there. Probably more of a home than the Invention ever was. But if anyone's earned it - fuck, it'd be her.]

[ CT would have protested that. She doesn't deserve Varric - she knows she doesn't. But that doesn't make her miss him any less.

She nods. Being that happy - she doesn't know how that would even be possible, unless she got back to Thedas somehow. Unless he was there. ]

Would you go back, if you could?

I don't know.

[On one hand, he'd know his place again. He'd see the guys, and they'd get up to...a hell of a lot, if Carolina is to be believed. They'd live on a remote island, like this one, only instead of flower sicknesses and flying elevators, it'll be Caboose befriending dinosaurs, and Sarge engaging in a one-man fight against gravity.]

[On the other?]

If this is the price I pay to see old friends, I'm not sure I'd want to just give it up.

[ Oh. She feels a stab of guilt. All she's wanted from the moment she got here is to go back. Back to Varric and familiarity and home. She's glad to have Wash back, of course. Of course she is. She'd thought she'd never see him again, and here he is. He'd survived, and that she even gets the chance to know that is a miracle in itself.

But staying here? Even the chance of staying with Wash, of reconciling with Carolina of all people, isn't enough to make her want that. She swallows, and nods. ]

I......

I'm glad we got to see each other again.

[ That much is true. ]

I'm glad you're here.

[ Selfishly glad. He'd been pulled from his home and his life, too. But she can't imagine how lost she would have been without him. ]

If anyone deserved a second chance, it was you.

[Which isn't really an answer, at all - maybe because he doesn't expect to be hearing that anymore. Because she didn't live long enough to see him turn into someone who could headshot old friends and set charges into their bodies without a shred of remorse.]

But I'm...guess I'm glad you're here too. I know you only really want to go back, but it's...

[He never even got to say goodbye.]

We all did.

[ None of them had been blameless. But none of them had known what they were signing up for, either. None of them had meant for things to go the way they had.

Not all of them had gotten that second chance, though. She's just glad that Wash had.

She nods in understanding. He doesn't have to say it. ]

Yeah.

I guess it's not all bad. Being here.

Maybe it'll just be a bump in the road. Rest stop on the way back home.

[Force a smile, Agent Washington. Pretend the thought doesn't dig claws into you, past the drape of ice you were so certain couldn't be cut by anything but the handful of sim troopers you've come to call family. Pretend that it doesn't ghost you, the memory that she disappeared and he never saw any of what happened between when she was there and when she wasn't.]

[And then she...wasn't.]

[Pretend it doesn't jar something in you, like a nerve you thought was deadened and numbed beyond the telling of it, to think that it might happen again.

Maybe.

[ The idea makes her heart lift. That's what she's been hoping for, after all. Isn't it the best case scenario? Come to a tropical island, meet old friends. Get some closure. Meet Wash again and make certain that he's all right. Then go back home, back into Varric's arms, and resume the life she'd never thought she could have. Her own personal happy ever after.

Only something feels wrong about the whole thing. Something's wrong with Wash at her side, a subtle change in his posture that anyone who knew him even a little less than CT did would never have noticed. She looks up at him, turning slightly toward him as she does, suddenly worried and giving him her full attention. ]

Wash?

[I hate goodbyes.]

[That's not him. He doesn't think that, he - he doesn't have any particular relation to goodbyes, positive or negative, that falls outside of standard acceptable deviations (those aren't your words either, Washington) because anyone would feel reluctant to let something go when you've seen it again for the first time in years.]

[Anyone would be hesitant to want to say goodbye again.]

I just keep thinking: I hate goodbyes.

[ Don't say goodbye. I hate goodbyes.

CT's eyes fly wide open in recognition, and she stares in shock. Does Wash - does Wash remember? Does he even realize what he's saying? Who he's quoting?

She doesn't know. But her stomach turns over uneasily, and she sets her jaw stubbornly. No. She doesn't want this. ]

Well, no one's saying goodbye.

[ It comes out a little sharper than she'd meant it to, and she bites her tongue, trying to soften her expression. ]

I'm still here.

[ And it doesn't look like she's going anywhere, for the foreseeable future. ]

[A million different variations on the same theme, quoted in so many different colors that it makes his head hurt. (Makes everything fucking hurt.) He remembers her voice because he remembered her voice, he remembered her imperfectly and in strokes and shades that must not have been who she was in practice. He took the theory of her and made her into something he recalled inaccurately - but close enough to hurt.]

[Remember the Counselor's perplexed murmur. Remember that goodbye tasted like copper on your tongue because you nearly bit through it in an effort to shut out the screaming.]

Don't go disappearing on me again, okay?

[He says it like a joke, but his smile is too uneven, and his expression is too pained.]

Edited 2018-09-13 05:58 (UTC)

[ She hesitates, her drive to face the truth head-on warring with her desire to protect Wash, to keep from hurting him any more than he's already been hurt.

You know I can't control that.

You know this isn't home for me.

But he does know. He does know, and the look on his face is breaking her heart, the way he's trying to smile and not quite making it, the fragility he can't hide.

She smiles back, and tilts her head like she's thinking about it, shrugs her shoulders in a careless, casual motion. ]

I guess I could stick around.

[Guilt is a familiar taste, but so is the afterthought - that it gets easier and easier to dismiss and let slide away into the background radiation of all the rest.]

[It's easy to dismiss, because it doesn't matter. Because neither of them picks or chooses how they end up here or when they leave, so what point is there in pretending?]

[Smile anyway.]

[Let it fade, just as quickly.]

At least you can bring something back.

[Like all these winsome shirts, for example.]

[ She's good on shirts, thanks, and it's not as though she's accumulated a lot else here. Still. The attempt at a joke, flat as it is, gives her an idea. ]

...Maybe I could bring you back.

[ It's just the beginning of an idea, and maybe an impossible one - but she's watching Wash's face closely even as it germinates in her mind, gauging his initial reaction. ]

[One corner of his mouth tweaks upwards, but he drops his stare. Reaches up a hand to comb through his terrible fucking helmet hair, where the bangs have flattened and the back sticks up oddly. He manages to make it all look, if possible, even more like an unkempt haystack than before.]

Tell me about it. What it's like.

[Which isn't an answer at all, because there are too many people he'd miss, and - how did that happen?]

[Hard to say, sometimes.]

[ It probably won't ever happen. She doesn't even know how to get herself back home, much less anyone else. And Wash doesn't want her to disappear on him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's ready to drop everything and follow her. He's got his own life. His own friends.

Still. Even dreaming about it is better than just...resigning herself to here. To never getting back.

She hums, tilting her head back as she thinks about it. About Thedas. About Kirkwall. ]

It's...

It's not like...back home.

[ If the Mother of Invention, if anything that came before it, had ever really been home. ]

It's...older. More medieval, I guess. [ She grimaces, knowing how unappealing that probably sounds. ] But it's not like you think. Kirkwall...well, the Hightown part is nice, anyway. And Val Royeaux is beautiful.

[ She can't make herself call Kirkwall's Lowtown beautiful. She can't. ]

They have different animals there. Not as weird as here, but...

There are dragons.

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