ɢᴀʟᴇ (traps) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-10-07 20:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent washington, gale hawthorne |
Who: Gale & Wash
What: A message sent via Baron Plucky brings Wash to visit a ghost (and bring ravioli in a can)
When: Today?
Where: Gale's safehouse
Rating/Warnings: Mostly low - lots of bromantic feels and discussions
Status: Complete
Ravens aren’t all that uncommon in the Pacific Northwest, so it wasn’t as though Wash had never seen one before. It was just that he hadn’t expected to see this specific one waiting for him as he left work. It was perched on a fence post and eyeing him as though it had been waiting for a good long time and had grown impatient. For a moment Wash had just stood there staring at it trying to register why one of Leliana’s birds was out at the Ranch. He had expected to hear from her eventually, as soon as the initial shock of Gale’s death had worn off and she had actually allowed herself to think again. If she hadn’t contacted him, Wash would have called her. Gale had been the best friend Wash had here in this fucking county. After everything, the least Wash could do was make sure the woman Gale loved was going to be alright. It wasn’t enough. No where near. For his own part, Wash had thrown himself into work. When he wasn’t at the Ranch shoveling shit or fixing fences, he was at Navi’s nursery hauling baby trees to or from a back of a truck. It was mindless work, but work that kept his mind from wandering too far to dark places he’d been to before. When he couldn’t be at either the Ranch or the nursery, Wash was at a bar and deep into a bottle, texting Kyu assurances that he was alright but just needed some time to process this….this… This fucking senseless death! He usually stopped texting when he felt himself cross over from tipsy to drunk. Drunk texting grief was never a good idea. Especially when that grief demanded answers, wanted to lay blame and felt guilty for being alive. After Wash had stood there stupidly staring at him, Baron Plucky squawked at him irritably, snapping Wash out of his thoughts long enough to receive the message the bird had brought to him. And what a message it was! Wash had to read and reread the damn thing several times before the reality of it sunk in. Gale was alive! Alive and apparently hiding somewhere? Alive, and apparently hiding somewhere and was hungry. What the actual fuck?! Clandestine missions were nothing new for Wash. His squad had specialized in them during their tours in the middle east. They were usually briefed on said clandestine missions before they took place, but whatever. Getting across town with supplies without being seen wasn’t too difficult a task. Dressed to blend, in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, baseball cap and minus his trademark boots, Wash arrived at the location Gale had indicated in his message, duffle bag stuffed with the requested goods slung over his shoulder. Let’s just say that was all more difficult than Gale had anticipated. He knew that faking his demise wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, or some jolly picnic - especially for his confused friends and family. But it wasn’t like he was new to all that shit - death, devastation, a film of coal dust grey covering his vision and making it hazy, settling on everything, sinking into the cracks of skin and down to bone. Lived it here, dreamed about it in another life - went to war both times, and both times returned with mission accomplished but not much else to show for it besides a sense of being ostracized, alone, and burdened with the shackles of PTSD. And his work for Leliana wasn’t easy either. Yet he dove into it, head first. Maybe because he knew, from the very first time he stepped foot in her house and they fucked in her kitchen with intentions to simply make their arrangement about comfort and nothing more, that he would end up loving her, and that meant wanting to protect her. Those instincts flared up, they snowballed, the deeper he got into the assignments given to him - ones that specifically went against her orders; he was meant to be her bodyguard, not to kill for her. But he was. All because he didn’t want her to fall into the same place her dream self had ended up in - tough, hardened, encased in titanium. Just like he had been, when he lost everything. Then it backfired. Her second-in-command wanted him dead, so, he pretended like the betrayal of Leliana and the murder of Gale she’d orchestrated had gone off without a hitch. It was up to Leli to finish all this, they’d both due for a career change - and he had plenty of time in the safehouse to think about what he’d do next, tucked away secluded very near the same Santa Ana mountains where he’d gone hunting with Wash, even. Wash. He knew he could count on his friend, his brother-in-arms. When he heard the approach, he went and undid all the locks on the door, opening it a crack to peer outside with those steely eyes. Without a word, he opened it wide, motioning for Wash to come in - and physically, Gale looked fine. If a little guilt-stricken and worried. He owed a few explanations, that he was sure of. This is war, not everyone makes it back alive Wash could still remember the first time he’d heard that. Carolina’s words of wisdom to him after their first mission - technically a success, but not without its losses. She had said them not to be comforting, but to make her new rookie understand just what he was involved in, because if he didn’t, he was of no use to her. He understood. And over time with continued missions, continued losses, he understood all too well. It was one thing to lose someone in combat. Wash had become good at compartmentalizing those losses, the fear, the regret, the guilt for surviving when others had not. If he hadn’t, he would have died a long time ago. It was another altogether to lose someone close to you at home. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen, here where it was safe. Supposed to be safe. And yet they did. Tragically. Senselessly. Without warning. Without reason. Oddly enough, loss at home was much harder to deal with. But Wash had done the best he could, admittedly, he had not done a particularly good job, between lack of sleep, the continued headaches as his brain became accustomed to the shiny neural implants and drinking himself into oblivion every night. He could have looked far worse. He shouldered his way into the safe house without a word, closing the door behind him. Then he turned and looked at Gale, peering at him from under the bill of his ball cap. His best friend back from the dead. Wash wanted to be both overjoyed and pissed off at the same time. Instead he only felt numb. There had been enough hope and disappointment in his life that he couldn’t dare bring himself to feel anything else. “You look pretty good for a dead guy,” Wash said at last. It was supposed to be a joke, but his voice sounded flat. With the ice broken, Wash reached up and took the cap off and set the bag down. “What the hell, Gale?” He demanded next, this time heat creeping into his words. “What the hell is going on?” Gale wasn’t usually a touchy-feely sort of person, he shied away from most physical contact that wasn’t Leli or his family, but he felt the moment warranted something and he wasn’t too proud to hug a friend - which he did, a little, though the way he pulled Wash in was nearly desperate, apologetic, sorrowful. It wasn’t a clinging type of hug, more brief than anything else - yet there was meaning behind it. “I’m sorry, first and foremost.” That seemed like the appropriate thing to say, as he turned to lead them both into a room to actually do some sitting, because conversations like these were best while sitting anyway. “I feel like I’m going to be saying that a lot lately, but...” He sighed, reaching up to work at a particularly irksome knot in trapped behind one shoulder. “I do work for Leli, or I did, I mean. She runs her own wetworks division - it’s shady stuff, not pretty. I was supposed to be her bodyguard, that’s what she hired me on for, but this type of work? It’s too close to what we both did in our dreams, and she told me how her experiences there basically ruined her. The last thing I wanted was for that to happen here too.” The duffel bag had been carried in by him, and he set it down near him. “So I started taking more of the difficult jobs, you know? The ones that ensured blood on my hands. To keep her out of it. But then her second-in-command decided she wanted me dead, bone to pick with Leli, hell if I know the reasoning. So she rigged up a mission, all after sending me on assignments Leli didn’t even want me to go on, behind her back, but this one was where I was meant to bite it. That’s why I had to fake my death, to make this fucking traitor think she succeeded.” Hugging was not something Wash was all too familiar with. His family had never hugged (at least not hugged him) and there was no hugging in the marines. Not really. Arms over the shoulder in a show of support was about as close as it came. So Gale’s sudden display took Wash a little off guard. He gave a soft ‘umf’ when their chests hit, otherwise he was too surprised to react, much less hug back. Then it was over. He didn’t mistake the emotion in that brief bit of contact. Anger was gone and replaced by anxiety that crept up from Wash’s stomach. He nodded numbly in acknowledgment of Gale’s apology, his mouth and tongue too stupid to actually say anything. He followed Gale into an adjoining room, but did not sit. He couldn’t sit. His guts were wired a little too tightly for that. He listened silently to Gale’s explanation of what he did for a living; what Leli did for a living, his steel grey eyes growing wider and wider as Gale went on. Wash had always figured there was more to Leliana than met the eye, but he hadn’t been prepared for what he heard. Wetworks? XO’s with vendettas? This was surreal. Wash sat heavily in an awaiting chair, his hands to his face, rubbing at his eyes as he processed what he’d been told. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured into his palms. “You couldn’t have told me before now?” Of course he couldn’t. It was only a moment before Wash had recovered. He could handle this. He had spent ten years of his life handling this cloak and dagger stuff. When he looked up at Gale again, the soldier was in control. “So you’re here,” he said. “I take it that to mean that the XO is being dealt with.” ‘Dealt with’ meant death, of course. Wash would be lying if he said he didn’t want to kill her himself. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew who would be dealing with the traitor. Wash got to his feet, standing a little straighter, shoulders squared, arms at his sides. A military man dressed in civilian clothes. “What now?” “Oh, she’s being dealt with,” Gale nodded, and he didn’t have to answer Wash’s original question - didn’t have to explain why he couldn’t tell one of his best friends anything about his former occupation, even though this particular friend would have understood the ins and outs more than most. He was already familiar with the knife-in-the-back, secretive ops scenarios - and what you had to do to ensure they stayed secret. Like fake your own death sometimes, for one thing. “I don’t know the details, really,” he added, standing as well, to the full 6’3 height and beginning to pace a little. He wasn’t decked out for warfare, wasn’t wearing fatigues now - just civilian clothes, a hoodie, though he still had the combat boots. Couldn’t seem to get him out of those. “But I trust Leli to take care of it, in her own way. As for what happens now, I stay out of the picture until it’s safe. Until me and Leli can actually be together. And...” he chuckled bitterly. “I find a new job, I guess.” Wash followed Gale’s pacing with his eyes. This whole thing felt weird, unnatural, and yet at the same time unsettlingly familiar. A cold seething anger had settled in the pit of Wash’s stomach, reflected only by the desire for blood in his eyes. He wanted revenge himself. The rational side of him, the side that had been cultivated to remain calm and in control in combat, the part that was used to burying his emotions deep, reminded him that at this point there was nothing he could do. Leliana would handle it and he would only be in her way. Had she wanted the help, she would have asked for it. His focus, his primary objective, was Gale. He glanced down at the duffle as Gale passed by it. Yeah. He could do that. A cold smirk came over his face. “The bird was a nice touch,” he said as he forced his shoulders to relax and his posture to take on something less than a soldier at the ready. “Not sure how Baron Plucky found me out at the Ranch, but he did. Wouldn’t leave me alone, actually. I take it he’s your eyes and ears...and mouth...while you’re hold up in here?” Wash shifted on his feet. He missed his boots, his feet felt incredibly vulnerable in a pair of Vans. “I got pretty much everything you asked for, minus one or two items. Short notice. Depending on how long it is you have to stay, I can assume I’ll be seeing more of Baron Plucky?” Gale turned, chiseled expression wearing its own version of a half-smile, half-smirk; something weary, because being squirreled away wasn’t exactly the best. He missed Leli, of course. And his other friends, Tella and the three nugs, not to mention the dumb network posts - communication could easily be compromised, so he was trying to avoid the electronic types as much as possible because if anyone else found out he was alive... Well. That would be dangerous, and word could travel fast. This whole plan needed to be airtight, unfortunately. But for the most part, Baron Plucky wasn’t so bad for company. “Yeah, he’s kind of my main communication device,” Gale nodded. “Leli swore by him, in her own dreams, and he worked out there for the same purposes so you probably will see him again at some point.” The regretful soldier paused for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, never had been. “Thank you,” he added. “For coming by. For keeping it secret.” He didn’t even have to ask; he knew that Wash would. “When all this shit settles, I don’t expect everyone to understand why I did what I did, but I’m sure you get it.” That coil of cold anger- wanting-revenge tightened, but when he spoke, Wash’s voice was light and nonchalant. It was alarming how well he could hide his own emotions. Not that he hadn’t been practicing hiding his whole life. “Forget it,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I live for this shit. It’s like being in Afghanistan all over again, only this time with less being shot at and more palm trees and surf.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “A little warning next time might be nice, though, man. Because, I swear to god, if you die again, I’ll kill you myself.” Wash glanced around the room they were in. The safe house wasn’t bad, as far as safe houses went. Homey, comfortable, a little lonely perhaps, hidden away up in the mountains, but at least it was the mountains that Gale loved. It was peaceful here, a good place to set one’s mind straight after almost getting murdered. “Can’t say that everyone will understand,” he said as his eyes wandered about the room. “Some of them probably won’t. This is something straight out of a Tom Clancy novel. But I wouldn’t worry too much about it at this point. It’s not like people haven’t come back from the dead before. You can always blame it on OC Fuckery.” He glanced at Gale sidelong, his tone turning a bit more serious. “You alright out here?” Like being in Afghanistan? All too true. Less of being baked to a crisp in the desert sun, and freezing to death at night in a tent and waiting up with a sniper rifle, but it was all just about the same mind-numbing level of shit hitting the fan. “Tell me about it,” Gale snorted a laugh, though it wasn’t at all amused. He knew that friends, true friends would understand - maybe they’d be angry at first, or a whole myriad of emotions, but he liked to think that overall they’d simply be glad he was alive and well. Anyone else? To hell with them, and what they thought. “When in doubt, blame OC fuckery, right?” He went to root through the duffel bag, unzipping it to see what was in there - he hadn’t asked for a ton, but the cans of Chef Boyardee, for example, never looked so good before in his life. Wash was a fucking saint. “But yeah, it’s alright out here.” He shrugged broad shoulders. “I know that Leli will get shit done quick. I trust her. I’m just...anxious sometimes. You want anything, by the way?” Gale asked, heading for the kitchen to grab a can opener. Cold pasta from a tin can was kind of the best - he planned to just eat it straight from there. “You can stay as long as you want, too. How’s Kyu?” Wash had eaten enough cold canned pasta and raw cup o’ noodles in his day. What could be considered cheap comfort food to some dredged up some dark memories for Wash. Besides, that cold coil in his stomach wouldn’t allow him to even entertain the thought of eating. He shook his head. “I’m good, thanks,” he said following Gale as far as the kitchen door. Hands still in his pockets, he leaned against the door frame. Anxiety. Yeah, that was understandable. Stuck up here all by himself with no idea what was going on in the valley. Wash would have been concerned if Gale hadn’t been anxious. Wash could stay and hopefully relieve some of that anxiety. He would stay as long as Gale needed him to. His eyes moved around the kitchen. “Kyu is…” there was no way to avoid the obvious, “she’s upset that you’re dead. I think she’s worried about me.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket to rub at the back of his head. His one tell when he was uncomfortable. Instead of the scar, his fingers had something new to toy with in his neck. “To be honest, I haven’t seen her since Saturday when Leli told us. I don’t...do...emotional shit.” Which was actually kind of funny given the situation now. Funny in a not-really-funny kind of way. But Wash was chuckling a little bit despite himself, because he really was an idiot and laughing felt good. “She’ll be fine,” he said with a shrug. “She’s a tough cookie, that one. A tough, glittery, pink cookie.” “What do you mean, you don’t do emotional shit?” Gale asked, turning from where he’d been rummaging through a drawer. He didn’t have a ton of supplies - this wasn’t a state of the art kitchen or anything - but he had enough to get by; the place was actually one of Leli’s secluded safehouses that she knew of to be completely off the grid, and that she’d used before. Maybe not for this exact purpose, but close enough. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” He poked a fork into the cold, saucy goodness once he’d peeled the top off of the can. The first bite was like heaven, better than most anything - hell of a lot better than army rations, that was for damn sure. Gale leaned against the counter, hip pressed to the edge. “Shit can change in an instant,” he added, voice more thoughtful, a bit gentler. “I didn’t tell Leli I loved her until I nearly got blown up in that mission gone wrong. Don’t make the same mistake, yeah?” Wash was right. Kyu was tough. But now was sort of a time where they should be sticking together, and saying all the things they needed to say. Wash watched Gale eat the cold raviolis directly out of the can and had to make a conscious effort to not make a face. He’d done that very thing countless of times growing up. He’d always somehow managed to cut his hands on the sharp edge of the can’s lid or the sides of the can itself as he’d hungrily eaten what he could before getting caught. Wash wasn’t sure if it was the memory itself or the consistency of cold pasta sauce that made him want to gag. But it was either watching Gale eat or actually raise his eyes to meet his friend’s in order to answer his question. He thought his statement had been pretty straight forward, and yet here he was staring at that can trying to put his thoughts into some kind of order to answer. His first thought was that he needed to get Gale a hotplate. He shrugged, his fingers still toying with the implant. “I was taught at an early age to not acknowledge them. The marines sort of reinforced that? And being told that you were dead-“ had really fucking messed him up, honestly “-I process things better on my own.” Yes, he was in love with Kyu. He still hadn’t told her. Hell, he was still trying to figure out how and whether or not it was a good idea. To hear someone else say it strangely made it real. Frighteningly real. The big bad marine afraid of telling someone he loved her. What a joke. “Yeah, I’m in love with her,” he admitted finally raising his eyes from the can to meet Gale’s own matching grey. Years of learned and conditioned self doubt had held his tongue this long, but Gale was right. Tomorrow may be too late. “I won’t make the same mistake,” he heard himself promise. “I know what you mean. Military life in general...” Gale trailed off. Right, being conditioned to force emotions to take a backseat to taking orders, and executing them without question, was a way of life. It had been for him as well - the problem with his dream self was that he began to think too much like a weapon, something molded to be the perfect rebel soldier. He began to look at people not as people, but as targets - how they’d best cross the trap, right? What would take them out, method and strategy and ideas that were cold. Love was...indescribable. That’s what made people unique - because love was a thing that made no damn sense at all, but feeling it and making oftentimes dumb decisions because of it was what made you human; he understood that now. “But glad to hear it. You’ll tell her. If anything good came from my ‘death,’” he said it like there were air quotes around the word, “...then it’s you and her getting shit together.” Another bite of cold ravioli, and he asked, with a discerning squint of those knife-blade eyes, “You okay?” Maybe it was just him, but Wash seemed different somehow. Could be all this crap (which Gale wouldn’t blame him for), could be dream stuff. It usually was around here. Wash’s eyes had been wandering the kitchen as he listened to Gale and trying to determine if a hotplate would be a good fit or potentially burn the entire place down. They slid back towards Gale when he asked him if he was alright. That was a fine question for someone who had faked his own death to ask. Wash’s first instinct, of course, was to say that he was fine. It was a reflex. Something else he’d learned to do as a kid along with hiding his feelings behind a mask and eat knock-off Chef Boyardee out of a can. Wait...that had been him, right? Or had it been…? He opened his mouth to answer and was startled when a laugh escaped him. It was a high nervous kind of laugh of someone who had obviously not slept well in the last few days. And then before he could stop himself, he was talking again. “You know,” as long as they were being honest here, “so much shits happening so fast and I feel as though I’m sprinting just to keep ahead of it. Dreaming of the Alpha. Dreaming of Agent Washington. No fucking clue who I am when I wake up in the morning. Oh, I got neural implants the other morning. That was a fucking treat. Then you died. Then came back and shit’s just running down stream for us all, you know? Everywhere I fucking look. Every time I fucking turn around and it’s something. Spiders, apocalyptic storms, gender swapping - lucked out avoiding that clusterfuck - doctors asking the same questions over and over - can’t really go back and see them again, now I guess. People losing their memories, talking of dying. Then getting them back and everythings just peachy again. Crazy ass XO’s with crazy-ass vendettas…” He was starting to sound crazy. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t. “I’m fine, Gale. How are you?” Gale let out a whoosh of air, sticking the fork into the last, lone ravioli and setting the can on the counter. He focused his attention on Wash, solely. “Okay, let’s just...hold up a little. The neural implants, I’m guessing that’s a dream thing too. Can you take them out? Is there a safe way to do that?” And it wasn’t like he was expecting an answer right now, but either way, being implanted with something sounded like a whole lot of horsecrap to him. “Things are shit for you right now. For both of us. My dreams ended and I’m obviously still dealing with the effects of them, with the crossover - dealing with becoming that person even if I try not to be. And the worst part is, I don’t know what to do to fix it. Maybe there is no easy fix. We just have to resolve to not let it beat us. I’m really not dead, Wash. And I’m going to fight like hell for the both of us because I think we got a glimpse of a life here that doesn’t suck, and we’ve earned it by now.” Damn straight they did. That may have been a little too much to dump on the table at once and Wash felt foolish for letting it get the better of him for a moment. He waved Gale off with a sheepish laugh and a shrug and ignored that cold coil of anger in his stomach that refused to let go and the icy clutch of anxiety in his chest. “I told you, I’m fine. It’s easy to get overwhelmed now and then, that’s all.” He was fine. He just had to keep telling himself that. “The neural implants are a dream thing,” he went on, considerably more calmly than earlier. “Every member of Project Freelancer has them. And no, they don’t come out. I woke up on...Sat..ur...day…?” It had been Saturday, right? When he’d woken up with them? It had been just before Leliana had dropped the Gale Is Dead bomb on them all. “Yeah - Saturday morning with a pounding fucking migraine. Not all that unusual after a Dream, but this one was the worst one I’ve had since the accident. I found the port in my neck after I put a bag of frozen veggies to the back of my head.” He stepped away from the door finally to retrieve the discarded can of pasta. He poked at the abandoned little ravioli inside. “Do you really think we become the people we Dream about?” He asked carefully, “whether we want to or not?” “What do they do exactly? Give you superpowers?” Gale asked, lifting an eyebrow. He folded his arms across the expanse of his chest - the question that Wash asked took some consideration, and he was sure that everyone on the network had their own opinion. But Gale had his too - and it was what he chose to believe. So, he’d be honest. Straight up candor, no sugar-coated candy. “I think we are those people,” he said. “As for the degree, well...that’s up to us to ultimately decide. Maybe it’s a struggle to resist. Maybe we’re gonna go through some shit before we figure out who we really are, and who we want to be. Maybe some people can’t even hack it - that’s why they move away. But in the end, we choose our ending. We see one in our dreams, and we write a better one here. Keep that in mind.” Wash laughed despite himself. “No superpowers,” he said. “We should be so lucky. No, the implants are for the A.I. we’re supposed to get to help us run our armor equipment.” He looked up from the can and the lonely piece of ravioli. What Gale said made sense. Just about everyone else he’d talked to seem to believe that the person in the Dreams was actually them, or a version of them at any rate. Which was all well and good, Wash didn’t want to argue the contrary. “Who am I?” He asked after a moment of thought. “A scientist obsessed with bringing back his dead wife, a blindly loyal soldier or a tortured A.I. program?” He laughed softly. “Can’t say as I like any of my options.” Though Wash was starting to lean more and more that he really was Agent Washington. The idea didn’t thrill him any, however. Poor S.O.B was going to end up dead. He was going to end up dead. But maybe Gale was right. Maybe this was his chance at something better. Wash didn’t see as though he had much of a choice. He didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go. “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said at last. Then, as a total shift in direction of conversation. “Think this place can handle a hotplate? ‘Cause that” he pointed at the can, “is disgusting.” “Who are you? You’re Wash...David, to some. You’re a good shot, and decent guy, deep down. Probably better at the emotional shit than you think. And you’re my friend. Not to mention my skateboard instructor.” Anything else? Well, maybe the details would fill in - but Gale didn’t think there was much sense in trying to obsess over a puzzle that had to unfold on its own, and on its own time. If living in Orange County had taught him anything, it was that - nothing could be rushed. He grinned crookedly, lifting the can to spear the last ravioli and pop it into his mouth. “It’s the dinner of champions,” he laughed. “Though I think a hot plate is doable. I’ll try not to burn the place down.” That would be the last thing he needed. But he’d just have to make this house a home for the brief time he was here, then move on with his life. Having learned a lesson or two and all the wiser for it. Mostly. |