Who: Freelancer Siblings What: Carolina receives orders to report for recommission When: Backdated to early May before the May the Fourth plot Where: The siblings' apartment Rating/Warnings Low Status: Complete!
Eleven hours.
To be precise, the letter arrived eleven hours, seven minutes, and fifty-two seconds before her 35th birthday. In reality, the words on the page had been printed long before the orders had been folded and sent away in that all-too-familiar envelope. Still, it felt like being on the edge of her seat, counting the last few seconds of the fourth quarter, when the buzzer-beater Hail Mary pass flies fifty yards across the field, only to drop right into the hands of the wide receiver waiting in the end zone. The crowd goes wild and the game is over, the ultimate risk and gamble managed to pay off in a win.
For the other fucking team.
Carolina slowly sat down at the table. So. They managed to make the deadline after all. A myriad of emotions played across green eyes. Anger. Frustration. Defiance. Self-pity. Remembrance. All of them battling for supremacy before they finally settled on acceptance.
She had known it was inevitable from the moment she left her psych eval. The woman had seemed determined to certify her no matter how she answered the questions. Hell, Carolina could have told her about fighting aliens in space and storm troopers in Disneyland and she would have been rubber-stamped, so long as she kept her firearm pointed in the right direction. The physical side of the testing had proceeded in much the same way.
The paper seemed to cry out in crumpled anguish as frustrated fingers gripped the page. Crumpling it up into a ball wouldn’t change anything, but it would probably make her feel better. Carolina read the orders a second and third time, looking for any loopholes or hints as to what she was going to actually be doing once she was back on the government’s payroll. There were none.
She folded the paper, but did not return it to the envelope. Instead, she pensively tapped the edge against the table. Carolina was officially on active duty once again. With everything that status entailed. There was a lot to prepare for and even more questions that would likely not be answered until she arrived on base. But first of all, and above all, there was one thing that she absolutely, one hundred percent, had to do before starting down that road:
“Wash?”
Wash was seated on the living room couch, feet up on the coffee table, and a pack of ice to his side. Sophie was laying on the floor under his legs. Mornings and late evenings were always the worst when it came to his pain management. He didn’t mind taking a Vicodin at night before bed, but first thing in the morning he tried to avoid. Occasionally Carolina managed to convince (or trick) him into taking one. But at this stage in his recovery, usually a round of ibuprofen and a pack of ice was enough to get him to the point where he could be mobile.
He looked up from his magazine when he heard Carolina call for him. There was something in her tone of voice that made the little hairs on the back of his neck raise. “Yeah?” He called back.
Carolina looked over at the patch of blond hair barely visible over the edge of the couch. Ah. He was awake, then. Probably didn’t take his meds. She considered for a moment, glancing up at the clock to check the time before getting up and heading over to the chair beside the couch. Better not to make him move just yet. As much as Wash needed to take his meds, she would rather be sure he remembered this conversation.
She sat down on the edge of the chair, facing him, letter still in her hands. The letter crinkled slightly in Carolina’s hands. Dammit. Fearing her own emotions would bleed through, she carefully smoothed her features into her best poker face. “I got a letter from the Marine Corps today. I’m being recalled to active duty.”
Wash knew something was up the moment Carolina sat down. It was the way the lines on her face smoothed as if to hide away what she was thinking, what she was feeling. Wash had seen that face so many times when they were in the same squad. And just as it had back then, it made him go on instant alert. He sat up straighter, the ice pack against his side forgotten as if it didn’t even exist. Before he could even ask her what was going on, she told him.
He blinked a couple of times as a myriad of emotions swept over him at once. Surprise, confusion, anger, fear...Surprise was the one that was the most fleeting. Unlike himself and York, Carolina hadn’t been discharged due to an injury -- in fact she hadn’t been discharged at all. In the back of his mind he had always known that this was a very real possibility, however, after their talk at the cabin, when Carolina had likened them to broken tools that needed to be put away, he had found solace in the fact that that was that. He and Carolina had just found each other, were just now starting to form the relationship they should have had from the start, and now, they were going to take that away from them.
But Wash was a Marine. He, better than anyone, understood the weight of that letter in Carolina’s hands. There was no question that she would report. Wash knew that if he had gotten that letter, he would have as well. There was even a part of him that was angry that he couldn’t re-enlist alongside her.
He let out a long breath and shook his head. “Leave it to the armed forces to wait for the eleventh hour,” he said with a grunt. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know you have to go, Boss. I’m not going to say that I’m happy about it.” He looked at her carefully, not as her subordinate, but as her brother. “I wish I could go with you.”
A bit of the tension in Carolina’s shoulders relaxed. She had known he would understand, but it was different to hear it directly from him. To hear her own feelings mirrored back at her. “As much as I trust you at my six, Gunney, I’m glad they can’t call you back.” Especially since neither of them would have any say over whether they would be stationed together. Given their history, she doubted the USMC wanted the two of them anywhere near the same team.
Which reminded her. “There’s a rumor about the base that the Colonel Romero, the one in charge of officer assignments, is a card player. I might need your help working my way into his game.” Setting one of them up for a fall was an easy way to get her ‘indebted’ to the host and keep them inviting her back to try and win her brother’s money back. Normally, she would consider that kind of thing a bit too sly for a Marine, but if she managed to use it to be assigned to Pendleton instead of the middle of buttfuck nowhere in Afghanistan or South Korea.
Wash made a conscious effort to stay relaxed. The truth of the matter was that he really wished he could go with her. Even if they weren’t assigned to the same team (which he understood would have been impossible given their history and the fact that they were related), he wanted to be out in the field again. After his discharge, Wash’d had a really hard time leaving military life behind. In fact, it was obvious there were still certain habits he couldn’t break himself of, not that he’d tried very hard. Until he had moved to Orange County and joined the network, Wash had felt utterly lost, just drifting along without any purpose. He would never admit it, but he needed the times of crises Orange County presented them with on a near monthly basis. He needed it in order to function. He would have given anything to be in the Marines again, to be out on the front lines or deep in some clandestine mission.
But he didn’t dare let Carolina know that. She had enough to worry about without her brother being one of them. So he kept his shoulders relaxed and focused on supporting his sister the best way he could. Which, apparently meant being involved with her sharking a Colonel. “My help?” He asked with a raised brow. “What can I do?”
Knowing how difficult it was for Marines to adjust to civilian life was one of the reasons Carolina would prefer that Wash stay right where he was. After everything he had been through, he had finally started to make a home for himself. Finally started opening up enough to have a real relationship. Regardless of her own reservations about Anna, she did have to admit that the girl’s infectious smile and happiness was just what her brother needed to get through the last year.
On the other hand, signing her name on the apartment’s lease with Wash was the closest Carolina had ever come to putting down roots. Her friends were either Marines or used to the lifestyle. None would be surprised if she had to pick up her things and ship out to Fallujah for six months. She liked it that way. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it just said something about her anti-social personality. Hell, even in the Dreams, her closest friends were her teammates. Her brothers and sisters in arms. And all of them had betrayed her. Maybe it’s time to figure out something new.
Carolina’s eyebrow twitched upwards in a shrug. “You’re getting better at poker, but these guys are true sharks. I’m going to need you to be a guppy for a while so that they don’t see me coming.”
Wash grunted. “So you’re using me as bait,” he stated flatly, though there was a hint of amusement in his grey eyes. “Lure them into a false sense of security before you take the shirts off their backs?” It was just like in their squad days. They’d had a standing poker game. York usually organized it and the members of the table often rotated in and out, depending on who had anything they were willing to part with. If Carolina believed any one of them were getting too cocky, she invited herself to a game and always made them remember the adage: “there is always someone out there more skilled, more talented, than you.”
Wash had no idea what Carolina had up her sleeve, but what was the harm? It would probably get him back on base at least one night a week. He chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, alright,” he agreed. “How are you getting us invited to these games?”
“That’s the idea.” Carolina nodded, leaning forward to rest her arms on her knees. Some people might call this conspiring against one’s superiors. The psychiatrist back in Texas probably would have frowned all damn day about it. Thankfully, her eval was over and all bets were off when it came to underhanded ways of keeping her Stateside. “Don’t worry about trying to lure them one way or another - if I’m right about this crew, they’d spot someone purposefully trying to tank their hand from a mile away. Just do your best, even if that means kicking their asses.”
Tossing the letter onto the table, the Marine folded her hands. “I have an idea of how to get an in, but it’ll depend a lot on how many contacts Shepard still has on base. If she can’t find a way to get us to the table, we’ll just have to improvise.” Carolina was damn good at improvising, too, when it came down to it. Now that she was sure he would remember the news, she gave Wash a very critical eye. She hadn’t heard him cough in a while. “But first, when was the last time you took your meds?”
Wash raised a brow, but decided he was better off not knowing about Shepard’s contacts, whatever they may have been. For now. Depending on what the future held, that may change. He did have a Jedi on his side...technically... and Wash was certain that if Carolina was involved, he could probably talk Kanan into just about anything. “Whatever you want, Boss,” he nodded. Orders received. Waiting on standby.
He groaned when she mentioned his meds. Just like that he had slid out of Subordinate Mode and into Younger Brother Mode without so much as taking a breath “I took ibuprofen this morning,” he said. “And I’ve been icing my side. See?” He indicated the ice pack, which at this point had turned more into a luke-warm pack of blue mush.
Although she had no qualms about hoodwinking Generals, Carolina had several when it came to using Kanan’s Jedi powers just for her sake. Getting the nurse to let her stay in Wash’s hospital room was one thing, especially with Wash’s life still hanging by a thread and her own emotions anywhere but stable. Besides which, there was entirely too much paperwork involved in military posts and assignments to really make using that particular skill feasible for this situation.
Carolina frowned at Wash’s groan. Her own shift between Commanding Officer and Commanding Older Sister was subtle, but present in a slight softening of her eyes. She reached over and poked the mush-pack with her finger. “Doesn’t count. That hasn’t been ice for a while. C’mon,” she lightly swatted his leg before plucking the ice pack away from his side. “Take the vicodin and I’ll get you a fresh pack.”