WHO: Wash & Zoë Washburne WHERE: streets of L.A. WHEN: sometime after this WHAT: An arrival and a reunion. RATING: TBD STATUS: part-log, part-thread; in-progress
There was something to be said about dying instantaneously – there was no lingering agony. But, when the dead person in question found himself standing on a sidewalk where there had been a ship a second before, it did complicate matters just a bit.
Wash was certain he was dead, however. Not that he especially wanted to be dead, mind you, but he had felt the impact before everything had gone black and still had the brief flash of memory that told him something had embedded itself in his chest. It hadn't hurt – rather, he hadn't had the time for the hurt to sink in – but he had felt it.
It would figure he had managed to get Serenity on solid ground only to end up a Reaver's kebob. Hun dan, what a way to go. He really hoped nobody had let the Reavers eat him. In fact, just thinking about it made him feel sick.
Which, as he had formerly understood it, shouldn't exactly happen in Heaven. Oh boy.
Hands on his chest, where there was no sign he had ever been dead, not even a little, Wash looked left, then right, then left again. Funny. He'd never imagined Heaven to look like this. Hell either.
And, he realized with a start after a moment, he had a heart beat. That – all right, that was just downright unsettling. Dead people didn't have heart beats. Especially not when they'd had something shoved through that area less than a minute ago.
Not that this was a bad thing, not being of the dead and heart beat-less, but it was confusing. A man passed close to him and Wash let go of his chest, waving to get his attention. "Uh, hi. Where am I?"
"Los Angeles."
Wash stared at the man a moment, pursed his lips, then spoke again. "I ask again, just slightly more bewildered than before – where am I?"
Couldn't be. It couldn't be. Zoë turned her head slightly, not wanting to give up her calm in case this was false. She'd drawn some attention already, though most of the looks seemed directed at her pistols, not her clothing. That voice. Strange new worlds, worlds that were. The past. Far too distant a past for him, but she was here, wasn't she?
Zoë turned her head slowly, and her steps were likewise soft. Too many years on a battlefield had taught her feet stealth. How to make just the right amount of noise to be unnoticed by your enemy. Or your prey.
But when she saw the shock of red hair, the warrior in Zoë slid away, and the rifle went limp in her hands, held up only by the shoulder strap.
"Bao bei?" (Sweetheart/baby)
"Oh. You're one of them." The man sighed at Wash. "Los Angeles, California, in the United States of America on the planet Earth."
Wash was about to answer him – because seriously, Earth? What kind of lunatic was this guy? – when someone spoke close to him, someone who hadn't been there a moment before by his approximation. Not that that meant much. She had always been too good at that.
He jumped.
"Motherless sonofa-" he turned and faced her, promptly forgetting about the man he'd been questioning. "Woman, you trying to give me a heart attack? 'Cause you can. 'Cause it's beating. See?" He reached out and grabbed her hand, putting it against his chest as he made a face. She would have to find this as odd as he did, though egotistically, he hoped there would be cheering or kissing or something on her part, since he was somehow not dead and that was a cause for celebration after he'd moved past the surrealness of it all.
But Zoë was here. If he hadn't had a heart beat, this fact would definitely be an indication of Heaven. Of course, that would mean she was dead if this were Heaven and she were really here for real and not just his afterlife imaginings until she came along, years and years later after a long life. He might joke about it, but death and Zoë should never be connected in a non-joke fashion.
Just to be sure, he reached out and laid his hand over her heart. Yes, definitely beating. Two for two.
Zoë could have wept when she felt the beating of his heart under her hand. She might have, if the shock had let her. His words were heard, or at least picked up, by her ears, but the meaning didn't register just yet.
Wash. He was here. He was alive. Zoë continued to ignore the random stranger - at the moment, no one existed but her man. Her free hand clasped over the one he had pressed against her chest, and Zoë shut her eyes for an instant, before looking back at him, afraid to look away too long.
"Hey, baby," she said, softly, hand tightening over his before she surrendered, sinking against him, no more words left to say.
No one was dead, so things were definitely looking up as far as Wash was concerned. None of it made a bit of sense, but he could still set that fact aside for right now, as certain constants were in place. Namely, he and Zoë were alive and together. He didn't even question that where he was (while alive, at least, as dead would necessitate a different set of standards for her presence), she would be as well. It just was.
But there was no cheering and no kisses in celebration of his miraculous aliveness, just pliable wife. But he loved pliable wife, that was one of his favorite kinds of Zoë – though, admittedly, nearly any kind of Zoë was a favorite.
"Hi, honey." He wrapped his free arm around her tightly, then wriggled his hand where hers and his remained between their bodies. "Look, no holes either!"
What? It was pretty remarkable, as far as he was concerned.
Zoë had been prepared to just settled against him, to accept that he was alive, and forget the nightmare that had ever told her he wasn't. He held her tight, and she let out a shaky breath....
and then stopped cold when he said that. Her eyes shifted, and locked on him, and then one hand whipped around to smack him in the back of the head. "Hoban Washburne, if you ever make that joke again, or any one like it, I will smack you again in those unpleasant ways you don't like. You hear me?"
And then, scolding done, she put one hand on either side of his face and kissed him, long and hard.
"Oww! But I- Mmm." All protests from Wash as to the nature of his observations, the use of his birth name and the penalties awaiting him for continued jokes were effectively canceled by a very, very nice kiss. Shiny. More than shiny even. There wasn't a word in the 'verse that accurately described this.
Hell, who needed words anyhow?
It was only belatedly, somewhere around the point in which he slid his hand from between them in order to get a definite and enjoyable grip on his lovely warrior wife, that he realized she might have seen more than he felt. It was easier, being on the receiving end of danger and death, especially when you came out of it alive instead of the previously thought dead, but he remembered what it felt like to see Zoë hurt.
He wouldn't wish that pain on his worst enemy, let alone the person he loved more than his own life.
His kisses suddenly became twice as hard, an unspoken reassurance mixed with a healthy amount of intent to demonstrate his aliveness in all manner of ways without words if she wasn't going to let him talk about the fact he wasn't dead.
Zoë's kiss was desperate, and grateful. When his hold on her intensified, she understood that he got her meaning. That she had seen it. How he had been. Her hands on his chest were not just to check his heart, but to reassure herself that the Reaver's pike hadn't crushed it.
She started crying then, still kissing him, and her hands clung to him, moving from arms to shoulders, to curl in his hair, clinging for a place to grasp so he couldn't, wouldn't ever be lost to her again.
"Baby," she said, once her sobs had settled enough to allow her to speak. "Baby, don't ever do that again. Don't leave me again."
She didn't know if she could bear it a second time.
There were several things that had the capability to turn Wash into an anxious mess. They weren't even a blip on the radar when compared to just the thought of Zoë crying. The actuality of it?
The mind boggled. Mostly his mind, but only part. The other part told him he had seen tears from her before, but Wash figured the events had been that scarring that his mind had kindly blocked the memories to allow him to continue to function as a man, rather than a useless pile of space waste. Pretty clever, that trick of the mind. He'd likely need it to do double time on all of this, he suspected.
But first, to get her to stop.
"Oh, hey, hey, hey," he said, the words muffled at times when his lips found hers and then pulled away to speak further, or moved to her cheeks and the underside of her jaw and her damp eyelashes. "Won't do that anymore. At all. Ever. I swear it. It was wrong and thoughtless and mean and terrible and-"
It was really difficult to think of things to add to the list of 'Wash is a very bad man for being harpooned by a Reaver' without referencing that event, so he stopped speaking again and instead kissed her deeply again.
People were watching as they passed by. Wash didn't even notice.