Agent Carolina (topoftheboard) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-04-08 15:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent carolina, agent washington |
Who: Wash & Carolina
What: Wash finally learns what happened to his squad
When: Last night & this morning
Where: A bar and then Carolina’s apartment
Warnings: PG for lots of drinking, some cursing, and a whole ton of stalking blowing up in a certain person’s face.
Status: Complete on posting
Wash wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk about what had happened after his accident, but he really wanted to know where his squad had gone. He thought it was beyond odd that Carolina had retired from the Marines or that York hadn’t shown up in Orange County with her. Out of all of them, Wash would have thought York would have followed Carolina anywhere.
Carolina hadn’t exactly volunteered any information and to be perfectly honest, Wash had been too hesitant to ask. He was afraid of what she would say. The Marines had classified what had happened to him as an accident, but to this day, Wash was convinced it was his fault. If, he’d only been paying more attention...
But Carolina wanted to talk now and Wash owed it to at least hear what she had to say. If she blamed him for anything, it was best he heard it now.
He arrived at the bar at 20:00 and found Carolina already there and clearly had been there for some time, considering the empty beer bottles already on the table. Wash braced himself for another awkward and potentially painful conversation. He took the seat across from her, looking at her carefully. “You started without me.”
“I got here early.” Carolina set down her current bottle as Wash sat down. She had, in fact, been at the bar since shortly after texting the man. They really had to stop meeting up like this; it could not be good for either of their livers. She had been in Orange County for a while but it seemed like the only time she spent with the man was either on the mats at the gym or getting drunk and having awkward, confusing, and awkwardly confusing talks. Just like this one would probably turn out to be.
The plate of bar food was long gone, but the bottles had continued to pile up slowly as she waited. Not enough to get her drunk, but enough to take off the edge of sobriety so that when Wash actually did show up, she would have a buffer between her feelings and the explanation she knew she owed him.
And now he was here, sitting across from her. Carolina opened her mouth intending to launch into exactly what had been keeping her awake for the past few nights, but all that came out was, “How are you with tequila?”
How long exactly had she been there? A few hours if the amount of bottles on the table was any indication. If he had known that, he would have gotten here sooner. Grey eyes moved back towards Carolina, his brows furrowed a little in concern. “It’s not my favorite,” Wash admitted, “but if that’s what we’re drinking…”
He signaled for the bartender to bring him a beer. He had some catching up to do and like Carolina, he had a feeling he was going to need something to take off the edge.
“I’ll get it.” She slid out of her chair and caught the bartender before he could get too far. The benefit to having been sitting for a while in full view of the bar was that Carolina had a gotten a good idea of just what alcohol she wanted. She returned to the table a few minutes later with a bottle of beer and bottle of tequila in one hand, and two shot glasses and a highball glass containing limes and a salt shaker in the other.
“Tequila Cabeza. Eighty-six proof.” Carolina explained in a voice not unlike what she used to use when she briefed their squad before a mission. Before everything went to hell. She began to set up the presentation, setting a lime in front of each of them and liberally sprinkling them with salt. “Full-bodied, rich, easy enough on the pocket book that it’s not too hard to get a bartender to turn over a bottle or two.”
Carolina poured the two shots three-fourths of the way to the top. “And it’s very flammable.”
Even now, Carolina could see the overlapping images in her dreams in the shine of the alcohol. The entire club was packed with people, but there he had been, just sitting at the bar playing with a lighter like this was the last place he wanted to be. The music in the club had been loud, but the constant clickclick, clickclick of the metal was all she had heard. Annoyed, she had grabbed the lighter from his hands and proceeded to yell at him over the din. He had just grinned, poured her shot, and asked if she knew how to use it.
That very same lighter from her dreams that was now sitting in the palm of her hand in the real world. It had appeared that morning on her nightstand - box, really - as if it had been there all along. Carolina doubted that Club Errera existed anywhere other than the world of her and Wash’s dreams, but the yellow logo was unmistakeable against the white steel.
With a flick of her thumb, she opened the lighter and dipped her hand just above each glass. The bottle was true to its word and the flame easily jumped to the surface creating twin blue flames. She set one glass in front of Wash and picked up the other in a toast. She smirked. “To old flames.”
Carolina quickly covered the glass with her palm, cutting off the supply of oxygen and extinguishing the flame. Once the fire was out, she downed the now-warm tequila like a regular shot.
She was briefing him. Wash shifted in his seat a little uncomfortably at first. This was unusual, even for Carolina. She had always taken her position seriously, but she had always relaxed a little when the squad had been off duty, at a bar, or relaxing with a few beers. This was different. This had the air of purpose to it.
He watched her pour each of them a shot, and his eyes caught on the lighter and widened a little. A silver lighter with a yellow logo. Club Errera. York’s lighter. The breath caught in Wash’s throat. The last time he’d seen York, had been in the Dreams when Wash had gone and recovered his body as was his job. Recovery didn’t mean collecting the body and taking it home to be properly buried and mourned. Recovery meant destroying damaged technology in the field before it fell into the wrong hands. It meant destroying York’s armor and York’s body inside it. Where was York?! Why wasn’t he here?! Why did Carolina have his lighter from the Dreams? Had she dreamed of his death already? No, that was impossible. Carolina died long before York had. So what was going on?!
“Boss…” He started, his eyes still on that lighter, but she lit the two shots on fire and placed his in front of him. He stared at it a moment before steel grey eyes jerked up towards Carolina in time for her toast. It was clear she wasn’t going to tell him shit until he drank.
So Wash drank.
He did as she did, covering the flame with his hand to extinguish it, then knocked the shot back and swallowed it in a gulp. The tequila burned the entire way down his throat, through his chest and hit his stomach. Whiskey was Wash’s usual drink of choice and the tequila hit him a little harder than he expected. He grimaced and coughed and set the shot glass down.
Drink in his belly, he looked at his commanding officer seriously, waiting anxiously for what this had built up to. “What’s going on?”
“The lime helps.” Carolina couldn’t help but smile at Wash’s cough. He was definitely not used to tequila. The look he gave her afterward doused any remaining mirth she had at the situation. She was not good at having these conversations. Even her attempt to turn it into a no-nonsense briefing had failed her. Is this how Wash had felt when he had to explain something to her? No, it was probably worse considering she was far less likely to believe him. I don’t want to believe my words either.
The tequila burned almost as much as Wash’s grey eyes were burning into her. She cleared her throat. What had she told him when this had started? Drink his beer and tell her everything? Picking up the bottle, she poured another two shots. ‘Everything’ would require far more liquor for her than it did for him.
“Did I ever tell you how I met York?” There was only the slightest of hesitations before the name. She owed Wash the full story and she might as well start at the beginning. That is, if she could figure out which beginning. Pulsing orange lights glared back at her from the shot glasses. Carolina stubbornly flicked open the lighter to chase them away with more blue flames.
“We met at a club-” Club Errera- “back before-” before the Project. “Before we were on the same squad. We became” lovers “good friends at the academy. Eventually, we ended up assigned to the same squad and he was promoted to my XO.” And we stopped being anything else.
The words caught in her throat and Carolina paused to extinguish the flame and down her shot instead. She gave an appreciative hiss as she reached for the next slice of lime. “Flaming shots are his specialty.” Carolina’s green eyes were haunted with the ghosts of her failures as they finally raised to meet Wash’s. “Or, at least they were.
“Gunney… Wash.” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “York is MIA.” Except now he’s haunting me in my dreams. “All of Tex’s squad is. South went AWOL and the rest of us… we scattered. I was reassigned to a new team and-” I failed them. I couldn’t keep them from dying. I couldn’t keep you from being hurt. She wanted to look away, but she no longer had that right. “I’m sorry.”
Carolina called him Gunney more often than she called him Wash. The moment she uttered his callsign, he felt his heart drop into his stomach. The way she looked at him, the tone of her voice, he knew anything she said next was not going to be good.
And it wasn’t.
His hand clenched around the shot glass. It was hot in his hand and kept him from spiraling. This was harder for her than it was for him. But it was still hard. Everything he’d feared since waking up had happened. His squad was gone. Their squad. MIA. Missing in Action.
There was a lump in Wash’s throat and his mouth felt too dry and too stupid. He extinguished the flame and downed the shot, this time thankful for the burn and the wheeze that followed. “What do you mean ‘Tex’s Squad’?” he demanded. “You were our commanding officer. York was your XO. Why was he with Tex?” Why did he leave you?! “He knew how you felt about her. Fuck, we all knew. You made it clear during the training exercise before the charge went off...” He trailed off. That fucking charge. All he could remember was Carolina yelling at them to keep going with the flag, that she’d keep Tex from catching up. She had practically screamed the orders at them. What should have been a normal routine exercise of Capture the Flag may as well had been another mission behind enemy lines. This time the commanding officer of the other team - Tex - had been their enemy.
Carolina’s enemy.
Then had come the explosion along with blinding white light and when Wash had opened his eyes again he’d lost a month, his squad and his career.
There was no dancing around it now. Carolina needed to get it off her chest and he needed to hear it all It was essential for both of them. “What happened after I got hurt?” He asked softly. “Did what happened to me - my failure - did it make them break up the squad? Did they assign York and the others to Tex?”
Carolina could see the pain in Wash's eyes as he reacted to the news, and she knew that what she saw would haunt her just like these Dreams. He had been the most innocent one out of all of them. The rookie. And she would have to live with the fact that she had added to the pained look in his eyes. She had thought that she had prepared herself for this, but even the numbing effects of alcohol could not dull this particular wound. Not that it would stop her from trying anyway. As he took his shot, she was already moving to fill up her own glass yet again.
She was halfway through pouring when his words finally registered. “What? No! York and North asked to be reassigned to that-” that bitch "to Tex's squad long after your accident." Carolina frowned. The tequila was starting to loosen her tongue, but it had no effect on her hearing just yet. Wash had not called it an accident; he had called it 'his failure'. That was not right. The only person who had failed was her.
Had he lost his memory of the event? Sure, she had read that he could not remember what happened immediately before the explosion, but she had figured someone would have told him.
Who could have told him, Carolina? You were gone when he woke up, remember? Her eyes widened a fraction and she set the bottle back on the table. "Wash, what happened in that exercise - to you - it wasn’t your fault.” Her eyes searched his face for confirmation. “You do know that, right? There was no way you could’ve known the charge was faulty.”
She was right, of course. There was no way he could have known the charge had even been set, let alone that it would have gone off prematurely right next to him. But he if had just listened to her, if he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t looked back…
Wash couldn’t look back at Carolina. He’d had to blame someone for what had happened to him, but when he’d woken up there was no one there to blame but himself, no one had been there to tell him otherwise.
Wash reached for the bottle, taking it from Carolina’s hands and poured himself another shot. He didn’t bother lighting it before slamming it back. He kept his eyes on the empty shot glass, unable to raise them to look at her and he didn’t trust his voice enough to answer her. He didn’t have to speak, his silence was answer enough.
Wash’s mind was racing at a painful and dizzying pace. Epsilon was practically screaming at him in garbled and jumbled thoughts and memories. It was too much like what had happened in their Dreams. Too much like how Tex had recruited York and North into her assault on The Mother of Invention - on the entire Project. Why had they done that? Why had they asked to be reassigned?
Because they had wanted to save the ones they loved. They knew what was going on inside the project. Just like you. Only they were brave enough to actually do something about it. You? You just turned your back and pretended everything was fine.
They left me. They abandoned me
They had to.
Wash winced, his hand gripping the neck of the tequila bottle harder. Yes. He understood that. He always had. In the Dreams they had no choice once everything had gone tits up. They had to leave him behind there. And here, they had gotten their orders. What choice had they had? What choice had any of them had?
He poured himself another shot in hopes the tequila would quiet Epsilon the same way Gale’s pills for his PTSD had when he’d woken up with his sanity nearly broken in half. He couldn’t function with Epsilon screaming at him, and goddammit if he ever needed to keep his grip, now was it. For her, for his commanding officer. He swallowed the shot and once the wheezing and coughing had stopped he finally turned his eyes back towards Carolina, tired grey eyes with dark circles lingering under them like two bruises.
He took a breath. “Of course I know that,” he lied. “They told me it was an accident. No one was at fault.” He closed his eyes and took another breath. Epsilon was quieting, retreating back to wherever it was he lingered until he was triggered again. He could think.
Wash opened his eyes again. “What happened to York?” He asked softly, gently. “Is North...is he gone too? And the others? Connie? Maine…?”
Carolina frowned at Wash. Between the way he had not been able to meet her eyes and the two additional shots, it was obvious to anyone with two eyes and a brain that he was lying. She had an urge to cuff him on the back of the head for trying to lie to her. Or at least for thinking she would believe it. Another time, she probably would have. Not tonight. Not when she was struggling with telling the truth herself.
She took the bottle from him and poured herself a shot. The only way she could think of to explain about York was to explain everything. "While you were still in the hospital, Command received new intel on our next target. The window was closing so they assigned another rookie to our squad and shipped us off again before the ink had time to dry on Andersmith's transfer orders." Private Andersmith had been a good man. A good soldier. Even though the squad was still reeling from the training accident, he had given them space to mourn while still doing his job.
Carolina's hand shook slightly around the lighter and she decided she did not need to have any more flaming shots tonight. No, straight tequila would do just fine. She set the lighter on the table and downed the shot. "After what happened to you, I wasn't about to risk not being there for Andersmith. I assigned him to be my partner when patrolling and-" And that's what got him killed.
She swallowed, this time filling both of their glasses. "He found an IED. Local insurgents had probably left it there on their way out. I told him to set it down so that I could check it out." He had. Which was why the Improvised Explosive Device had exploded on him instead of on her. He had died following her orders. "But it went off before I could get to him.
"After that, well, York said I changed." She gave a short, hollow laugh and downed the shot. She could start the feel the tips of her fingers tingling in time with the burning of her throat. "The mission we were on, well, it was a job for a full unit. There was talk about us pulling out and giving it to Tex's squad. I tried to get us to keep the mission anyway. I'd nearly convinced them to let us continue when York gave me his transfer request."
"Once York left, North, Connie… they also requested to transfer. I gave it to them." Carolina ran a hand through her hair. York had tried to convince her to go with them, to give up command for a bit so that she could find her feet again. So that they could be together again. She had refused. It was the last time she spoke to him.
"There wasn't much we could do as half a squad, so they split the rest of us up into different units." The bottle was getting suspiciously lighter as she continued refilling her shot glass. "I heard through scuttlebutt that the mission Tex's squad had been on had gone horribly wrong. They had missed the extraction time and were presumed dead. South went AWOL soon after that. I think she probably went to try to find them."
Wash stared at her. He had lost count how many shots each of them had, but he continued to drink as Carolina told her tale. He got the impression that she was leaving out details, but he didn’t call Carolina out on it. He’d done the same thing when he had given his explanation. He afforded her the same time to explain herself as she had given to him at his apartment. He sat in silence and drinking tequila as she spoke. It wasn’t too long before he found that he was buzzing. His face felt numb as did the spot along his neck where his shoulders connected.
York had been right. Carolina had changed, it was more evident now as they were slamming down tequila as though it was water than it had been before. Wash could understand why. Combat changed you. And losing two squad members so closely together?...That would change anybody. Wash found that he understood York’s reasoning. They should have pulled out. However, in a strange way, Wash also sort of understood why Carolina had refused. Just like with the Project.
“I’m sorry, Boss.” His shot glass was empty and his head was still swimming in both tequila and memories. He reached across the table to grab hold of her hand. Carolina needed the contact, the warm touch of someone who could not only empathize with her loss, but felt the loss himself. And someone who in no way shape or form, blamed her. It was clear Carolina was blaming herself enough for the two of them. For the whole damn squad. If Wash had been a more huggy person, he would have embraced her. “I’m really very sorry. Thank you. For telling me.”
Part of Carolina wanted to shrug off Wash’s hand and snap that she was not a kid that needed to be comforted, but that would not help him. Instead, she turned her hand so that she could return the contact properly. His hand felt warm and tangible, a reminder that he was really there, sitting beside her, alive.
“I should’ve told you sooner.” Carolina took a deep breath. It was time to finish her apology. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry you got hurt following orders. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to shield you from the blast. And for not being there when you woke up.” Maybe now that damn Dream will stop repeating every night.
She hated being emotional. Especially when there was anyone else around to see her. God, she hoped this was the last time they would have to have such an emotionally draining conversation. A buzz in the back of her head tried to remind her of something, something else she was supposed to tell him, but it went away when she shook her head to clear it. The eighty-six proof was doing its job well.
“It’s not your fault either, Carolina,” Wash said, his voice sounding choked as he squeezed it out around the hard lump in his throat. A part of him wanted to cry, but he didn’t dare He swallowed down that lump and the tears that had crept into his eyes. His hand, warm and slightly calloused from his work at the ranch, squeezed hers, reassuring both her and himself. They had each other, and now that he had her back again, he wasn’t about to let her go. Not now. Not ever.
They continued to sit and talk and drink their tequila, leaning in towards one another for support, for comfort and reassurance that the other was still there. They remembered together. They remembered stories of their old squad, now divided and cast to the winds. They remembered and drank to better times. Not ever being a praying man himself, he wished and hoped that wherever they were York and North were alright and that Fate, that strange bitch, would bring them both back into his life the same way she had brought back Carolina. This was Orange County, a place where literally anything could happen, no matter how far fetched.
The bottle of eighty-six proof Tequila Cabeza was long empty by the time the bar closed down for the night and the two former marines stumbled out into the dark quiet streets. Wash was emotionally drained and drunker than he’d ever been before in his entire life. One arm was around Carolina’s shoulders as he mumbled “There’s no way ‘m drivin’ ‘ome. Wha’d ‘bout you?”
Carolina was not sure if she was holding up Wash or if Wash was holding her up. The world was a swirl of dark colors as she stumbled against the man. That second bottle had not been the best idea she had come up with, but she certainly was not caring at the moment. She had more important things on her mind right now. Like how Wash was heavy. And when did he get so tall?
“Imma ge’ a tak’chi.” She hiccupped, which only served to cause a round of drunken giggles from the woman. “We c’n share.” Carolina tried to lean on something so that she could figure out where her phone had gone.
Carolina’s giggles made Wash laugh. Oh, goddamn it felt good to laugh, especially after the night the two of them had had. He would pay for it in the morning, he knew. There was nothing quite like working outside in the sun with a hangover to end all hangovers, but at that moment Wash didn’t much care. He felt as though the air between himself and his former CO was clear now, less awkward. With everything out in the open the two of them could finally start to move on. It would not be easy, not by a long shot, but at least they had each other, so when Orange County decided to knock them down, they could pick each other up again.
He let her go so she could lean against a lamp post and fuss with her purse. It took a little longer than Wash would have normally liked to realize she was looking for her phone to call a “takchi”, whatever that was. He was still laughing when he dug his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Here, y’kin use mine.”
“T’anks” Carolina giggled again at Wash’s laugh. It felt like years since she had heard the sound not tinged with sarcasm or hollow with pain. She wanted to hear it again. Carolina was very glad she did not have to work in the morning, although that would probably have to change soon. Soon, but not now. She would be lucky if she got out of bed before noon with the amount they had consumed. It usually took a fair amount to get her drunk, much less bubbly drunk.
The numbers on Wash’s phone refused to stay still, but Carolina bit her lip and forced herself to focus long enough to enter the 800 number she had memorized after her first drunken night in the city. The man on the other end of the line sounded like he had long resigned himself to getting drunken requests at this time of night. All he asked was for the name of the bar, knowing that the drunk woman at the other end of the line would likely not know or remember the address.
“Th’s is y’urs, Gu’ney.” Carolina handed the phone back to Wash. A few minutes later, a yellow cab rolled up in front of the street lamp and she tugged his arm toward the car. She requested to be dropped off first, that way the cabbie could drop off Wash on his way back to town. It sounded reasonable in her inebriated mind. Logical, even. So she gave the man her address.
The Slater Slums were notorious for attracting violent and unsavory characters, but Carolina had been far more interested in the dirt-cheap rent. Besides, she was probably more dangerous than most of her neighbors were, combined. Unfortunately, the cabbie was far more worried than she had been about the well-earned reputation. Which meant that the moment the cab was free of its occupants, the driver decided to take the cash he had been already been given and get the hell out of the neighborhood as soon as possible.
Wash was not particularly impressed with Carolina’s neighborhood. Although he wasn’t too concerned that anything would happen to her - she would gut anyone who attempted to get the jump on her - he was a bit disheartened that his former CO was living in a place that he believed to be so beneath her. Even when he’d been living on his pension alone, he’d found something ten times better in Seal Beach. Compared to this place, his utilitarian apartment may as well have been the Ritz fucking Carlton. And finally he was annoyed when the cabbie decided to take off without transporting Wash back to his more comfortable neighborhood.
“Asshole,” he muttered under his breath as the cab roared off into the night. The busses had long stopped running for the night and Wash sure as hell wasn’t going to attempt to walk through Slater Slums back to the bar in Seal Beach to spend the night in his van, much less attempt the trek back to his apartment. He wouldn’t have wanted to do that stone cold sober. Walking around in a deadly fog or while Orange County had been transformed into Panem, had been one thing. Potentially getting mugged was another all together. A glance at his phone told Wash that the hour was much too late to call anyone to ask for a ride. Leliana or Lina may have actually killed him if he’d tried.
“Whelp, Boss, looks like I’m stayin’ the night,” he said. He took Carolina’s arm over his shoulders again and made his way inside her building. The tequila had loosened his tongue up considerably and he had no problem saying just what he thought of Carolina’s new home. “Jesus Christ, this place is a shithole. Y’know, there are a coupla apartments in my buildin’ up fer rent. Since yer plannin’ on stayin’ ‘ere fer the duration, maybe ya could live there? It’s a helluvalot better than this fucking place. What floor are you on?”
Carolina was not as calm about the asshole cabbie as Wash was. It took a moment for her to realize what had happened, but the moment she did she was yelling at the retreating car until it had disappeared around the corner. With the rush of energy gone, her legs threatened to tip her over and she was glad when Wash took her arm to steady her. Had the lights always spun in circles? She’d have to tell the management about that in the morning.
“Sec’nd floor.” She murmured, pointing to the top left door in the four-set. “‘T was all I could af’ord.” Unlike Wash, she would have to wait until she retired to receive a pension from the government, so she had been forced to live on what she had managed to save up over the years. Without knowing how long she would have to search the city to find him, Carolina had simply found the cheapest place that didn’t require a contract.
“Yer place is nice.” Carolina hiccupped again. “Like a home.” As they neared her door, she shrugged out from Wash’s arms and dug for her keys. She frowned, that buzzing had returned at the back of her skull. Something was wrong. Something she was not supposed to do. Something about not letting people see something. But she could not send Wash away. He was drunk! She had promised she was going to look out for him! Maybe if he promised not to see whatever it was she was supposed to hide, it would be okay. Wash kept his promises, after all.
“M’not s’posed to let people see.” She turned to face Wash, her tone serious even as her eyes were glazed from the alcohol. “So you gotta pr’mise you won’t see-” Hic! “anyth’in.”
Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door to the dingy apartment and flicked on the light. The inside was definitely run down, but it had been cleaned to the best of Carolina’s abilities. There was a blue second-hand couch that sat on one side of the living room, and what looked like a door was propped up by two moving boxes on either side to form a coffee table. The other side of the room was clear of everything - furniture, adornments, and the like - as it was used primarily as an exercise space. The main room branched into two doorways, one that led to the kitchen on the right and another to a small bedroom on the left. The doorway on the left had a few scuff marks halfway down the side that suspiciously matched the scuff marks on her “coffee table”.
The moment she crossed the threshold, Carolina felt tired. She was finally back after her mission to tell Wash what had happened to their squad. She could finally sleep and not have to worry about dreaming of a brown haired man with a goofy smile. The night was over, and all she wanted to do was fall into her bed and sleep.
“Couch.” She slurred, tossing her purse and keys onto the coffee table where they knocked into the pile of files that had been stacked there. “Kit’chin o’er th’re.” One hand waved to the right. “B’throom through th’re.” Carolina pointed to her bedroom. “No d’rs. No need t’ knock.” Her words were slurring even more now that exhaustion had taken control of her limbs.
Wash was a smart man. He could figure out the rest. She was headed straight for the queen sized mattresses that made up her bed and god help the person who tried to wake her up before morning.
Did she...did she just order him not to see inside her apartment? Wash blinked at Carolina as she fumbled the door open and stepped in. No...no it hadn’t been an order exactly. You didn’t promise to follow an order. You just fucking followed it.
It was going to be a pretty hard promise to keep unless he closed his eyes and felt his way around, but he’d try. Honestly, he was so drunk and so tired that whatever he saw he probably wouldn’t remember anyway. So he just nodded numbly. “Yah, sure, Boss. I promise.”
The moment he stepped inside he almost immediately broke that unkeepable promise. The apartment was livable, at least, but Wash expected to see a half dozen cockroaches scurry across the floor once the light was on. In his inebriated state he wasn’t able to disguise the disgust on his face. The idea that his commanding officer lived in such a place did not sit well at all with the former Marine. First thing in the morning he’d ask his landlord about letting him move into a two-bedroom apartment. Maybe if he spun it right, Carolina would move in with him and out of...this.
He listened to her give the nickel tour and, almost as he promised, didn’t look around. His eyes settled on the couch. Ohhhh, finally. Wash had no idea just how tired he was until he flopped unceremoniously down on that couch, practically face first. Yeah, he could sleep here. It was about as comfortable as the couch in his apartment and he’d certainly slept in worse places. So long as nothing attempted to crawl up his pant leg while he slept he’d be fine.
His eyes were already closing and drunk sleep was pulling him away from consciousness. His last thought before drifting off was that in the morning he’d make a plan to get Carolina out of this dump. In...the...morning….
Wash had no idea what time it was when his eyes opened again. At first he had no idea where the hell he was and instantly a wave of panic caused him to jerk off the couch and roll onto the floor where he hit his back against something that felt like boxes. He laid there for a moment, blinking before the events of the night previous percolated up from a dark sleep-fogged brain. He’d met Carolina at a bar. They’d drank their weight in tequila (which explained the fucking headache he had) while talking of their squad, making apologies and remembering better times. Then the two of them had stumbled home. That’s right. He was in Carolina’s apartment. Carolina’s nasty dingy apartment.
Wash sighed and drew himself up off the floor. He teetered a bit on his feet still a little drunk, but no where near where he’d been when he’d fallen asleep. It was then he realized a pressure in his bladder was demanding his attention and what had probably woken him up in the first place. He stumbled his way to the bathroom to relieve himself. Once that business was taken care of and he’d grabbed a handful of pain relievers from the medicine cabinet for his damn head, he stumbled back into the living room. Water. He should drink some water before laying down again.
He made his way to the kitchen, feeling around for a glass and then for the sink. He paused for a moment wondering if he should risk drinking the water that came out of the tap. As shitty a place as this was, it was still on city water, which should have been fine. Unless something had died in the pipes. Ugh. Gross. But unless he wanted to go through tomorrow feeling like death warmed over, he’d have to take the risk.
He drank one full glass of water with the pain relievers while standing in the kitchen, then filled it again and took it back into the living room. He sat down on the couch again and glugged down half the glass before setting it down. How was he going to get her to move out of this place and in with him? Carolina was a proud woman, he had to be sure that however he presented the offer it didn’t sound like pity. She would kick his ass extra hard if she thought he was giving her a hand-out. Maybe if he presented it to her as a logistical decision. The two of them would be a better team if she lived closer to him. They could better be there for each other when weird shit happened. He had to be careful about how he went about phrasing that proposition otherwise he might find himself living here and wondering how.
He sighed. He was too tired to come up with a plan right then and there. More sleep would help. Once the sun was up, he would think of something better. Maybe he could get Gale’s advice. Or Peeta’s. Or Leliana’s.
Wash laid down on the couch again, but sleep did not come nearly as readily this time. His head was still pounding and as he waited for the pain relievers to do their job, his eyes settled on Carolina’s “coffee table”. A door supported by moving boxes. Jesus Christ.
Wait...what was written on that box? Wash squinted at it. He could make out the first letter: D, but it was too dark to determine the rest. Curious, Wash dug his phone out of his pocket and used the flash to get a better look. The name on the box was his name, written in his mother’s handwriting: “David”
Wash stared at it. Was he still drunk?! Why the hell did Carolina have a moving box with his name on it? Wash sat up. A quick inspection told him the other three boxes supporting the door also had his name on them also written in his mother’s handwriting. What the hell was this?
The light from Wash’s phone fell on the file on top of the coffee table, half buried under Carolina’s purse. A few documents had slipped out of the folder. Wash moved to pick them up. The one on top was a medical record. His medical record, detailing the head injury he’d sustained when the charge went off. A psych profile was also attached. Under those was a service record, somewhat redacted, but clearly his. Other documents included his high school transcripts and discharge papers.
What….what was this?! What was going on?! How…why did Carolina have these documents?
Then it all made sense. She didn’t just happen to wander into his bar one night. Fate hadn’t brought her to Orange County. Carolina was fucking stalking him! Had everything she told him that night - telling him it wasn’t his fault for getting blasted by that fucking charge - had it all been a lie?! York and North were MIA, Andersmith was dead and South was AWOL. None of that would have happened if he’d just followed orders. And now here was his former commanding officer, who had lost everything, out to track him down...to seek some kind of revenge?
Wash felt sick to his stomach. He couldn’t stay in the apartment. Fuck it, he’d run back to Seal Beach if he had to. He just had to get out of there. Now.
He stuffed the documents back in the folder and got to his feet again. He left the apartment as quietly as he could so not to raise an alarm from the master bedroom where Carolina was sleeping. The only sound he made as he left was the soft click of the door as it closed.
The sun was already peeking over the horizon by the time Carolina opened her eyes and returned to the world of the living. The sun was shining directly into her eyes and doing absolutely nothing for her throbbing headache. Goddamn tequila. Other bodily functions were steering her attention away from her head, however, so she decided to risk standing up in order to take care of them.
Cradling her head, she slowly and carefully sat up. Right. Step one down. Now for step two. Carolina used the box doubling as her nightstand to steady her as she stood up. The room spun once before settling back into place. Good enough. She sludged her way to the bathroom on mostly-steady legs. A few minutes and a few aspirin later she headed to the kitchen, intending to get one of the sports drinks she kept in the fridge before heading back to bed.
Halfway through the living room, she paused and frowned at her coffee table. Why was there a half-empty glass of water there? She didn’t remember leaving anything on the table yesterday before she left. Especially not something that could easily be knocked over and ruin the files that had taken her so long to get.
Wait. The files. Wash. The memory of her screaming at a retreating taxi filtered in through the haze. That’s right. The damn taxi had left and she had led Wash back up to her apartment so that he could crash on her couch. The couch that happened to be right next to a table made out of boxes of his things. With a large and very confidential file all about him lying on top of the table. The file that was now looking very out of place with documents half-crammed inside of it, as if the last person to look through it had tried to put it all back in a hurry. A person that was nowhere to be seen.
“Oh fuck me.”
If Wash had woken up and seen the files, that meant he knew everything. The fact that she had gone looking for him in Spokane, only to be sent to California with only the address of a medical hospital and five boxes of Wash’s things that his mother had told her to give to him if she ever found him. And she had found him. Him and a whole bunch of craziness that had her half thinking the blow to the head Wash received in that training mission had messed up a bit more than just a scar on his head. Who could really blame her for trying to get more information about what had happened to Wash after she had been deployed? Well, Wash could, apparently.
Her purse on the coffee table was still closed and looked undisturbed. That meant that he had not seen the last document she kept forgetting to put in the file. The test results that might have explained everything were still safe and locked away where Wash had not thought to look. And why would he? The boxes were still intact and he had even left the file where he had found it. There was no sign that he had even tried to take anything with him.
If the situation had been reversed, the man in question probably would have woken up to the end of her gun and a demand for answers. But Wash was a good guy. It probably had not even crossed his mind to try and interrogate her for answers. Instead, he had put everything back in the folder and vanished out of her apartment - and if he had any sense left in that shaken head of his, out of her life as well. And it was all her fault. Again.
At least he didn’t say goodbye. She hated goodbyes.
Carolina ran a hand through her hair, wincing as it aggravated the headache that had come back with a vengeance. She was done with keeping things from him. She’d give him the boxes, the files, the test results - everything. After that, she had no idea. Maybe she’d go back to Texas, or join her father in whatever place his latest project had taken him to. Anywhere but here.
Green eyes fell on the moving boxes that were still lying askew beneath the door-table. She had promised his mother that she would deliver the boxes, and she always kept her promises. She cracked her knuckles and reached for her purse to grab her phone. “Looks like I’m going to have to find you again, Gunney.” She whispered to the empty apartment. “Just one last time.”
Wash could run, but he couldn’t hide from her from her forever. Not from her. Never from her.
They were family, after all.