Agent Washington (completelysane) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-02-22 10:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent washington, peeta mellark |
Who: Wash and Peeta
When: Today
Where: Abandoned shopping district
What: Fun with Jabberjays!
Rating/Warnings: Blood and violence - some adult language too
Status: Complete!
Weather in Orange County was the absolute worst. If it wasn’t apocalyptic storms than it was random snowfall inappropriate for the area. And when it wasn’t random snowfall it was goddamn fucking fog of monsters and/or death. And now? Now it was scattered showers of blood.
As far as Wash was concerned the weather could go fuck itself. In fact this whole dream bleed over event could go fuck itself. With each passing day bringing something new Wash grew more and more anxious about the whole thing. He’d listened to Gale talk about his Dreams and nothing, nothing good was going to come out of this. He was worried about what this would mean for his best friend.
Wash had taken to patrolling the streets despite the weather, looking for innocent people caught up in the bleedthrough. He had to. He wasn’t a marine anymore, but that didn’t make him any less of a soldier. He couldn’t just sit in his apartment while this shit happened. And, for some reason, he just seemed to function better when in crisis mode.
He’d left his van parked and had started walking through a shopping district when he heard the screams. Instantly he was in a run towards the sounds, his weapon drawn.
There was a level of guilt inside of himself that made Peeta go out and wander around the streets to check on people and make sure no one was being injured in this. He had managed to make it through the Quarter Quell once and he knew he could do it again, but it didn’t seem like anyone was actively out looking to kill the former Victors, but they just wanted to mess with their heads. And they were all prime targets for that sort of thing. He had gone through so much already in the past few days and he just wanted things to stop.
Fighting monkeys with Gale, watching Caroline get hurt in the fog and having to heal him when he wound up in the fog was well, and he just hoped that this would be over. There was a bit of a break yesterday, but he didn’t expect it to last much longer. He was taking longer walks to get to his bakery, so he was walking through the same shopping district as Wash when the scream rang out. He stopped for a moment to allow himself check what direction it came from and all that military training came over him as he started to make his way in that direction.
What he hadn’t expected was to run into Wash, whom he had only met once at Gale’s ‘funeral’ and he did a double-take, “Wash?”
At the sound of a voice behind him, Wash whirled around, gun aimed before he had time to register what the voice had said. He pulled his gun back when he saw a familiar face. He knew this man. It took a moment of blinking before his swiss-cheese of a short-term memory came up with a name to go with the face. Mellark. Peeta Mellark. It was another moment and a few more blinks before Wash could pull anything other than a name. He was a friend of Gale’s. He’d been at Gale’s funeral. Wash had said hello, introduced himself and made painfully awkward small talk, but that was as far as their conversation had gone. Wash was surprised Peeta had actually recognized him months later.
“Mellark?” He lowered his gun. “The fuck, man, you gave me a heart att-”
More screaming made Wash jerk around. “Please tell me you heard that.”
Peeta had a thing for faces and names, which worked really well when dealing with customers every single day and building up that customer base. If he remembered correctly Wash had been in blues and a fellow military member, which explained why the man was out here. Peeta had actually remembered to bring a gun of his own this time along with his knives because he was not having another monkey incident on his hands.
When Wash turned the gun on him his hands instantly went up in the air to show that he wasn’t going to hurt him and then began to lower his hands as Wash spoke, but that scream once again broke their conversation. “Hey sorry ab--”
“Yeah, I heard that,” Peeta grumbled as he looked around, “That’s what drew me over here.”
“It’s coming from that direction,” he nodded his head back the way he’d been going before Peeta had run into him. “C’mone, I may need your help, if you’re willing.”
Wash had been monitoring the network closely. Leliana had been right when she’d said that it was far better at reporting weird crises than the news was. Due to the reports (and unlike when he’d stumbled out into last month’s fog), he’d been sure to take necessary precautions. A gasmask hung around his neck, though he hadn’t actually come into contact with the noxious fog as of yet. His battle rifle was strapped to his back and his combat knife was at his thigh, both within easy reach. He had on a flack jacket with pockets full of extra ammunition. His trusted combat boots on his feet stained red due to the previous rains. Gale’d told him that Orange County had become an arena from his dreams - from goddamn Panem - and it was a lot easier for Wash to handle if he treated it as though he were back in the war.
He moved swiftly and surprisingly quiet for the amount of equipment he was carrying. He was expecting to come across some kind of victim, either from monkymutts or that weird monster the news had reported. He was surprised when they reached the little courtyard area where the shrieks were coming from and found no one there.
“What the…” Wash glanced back at Peeta. “What’s going on?”
“Of course, I’m not letting you go into anything by yourself,” that was the honest truth. The scream was suspicious and he was not about to let Wash accidentally walk into some sort of trap. Especially since this was due to his dream world.
Looking over Wash he couldn’t help but smile. Peeta was definitely out of touch with his military side after being injured and discharged, but he was amused to see Wash had the right idea. Peeta had a gun in his shoulder harness along with some extra ammo in his coat pockets along with a few knives. He never had much in the Arena, so it felt strange to him to bring quite a large arsenal with him. A small wish went out that Caroline was around because her vampire skills were quite astounding and incredibly useful in a fight.
He was trying to count over the horrors of the Arena and figure out what in the world they were about to encounter as they swiftly moved towards the noise. He just prayed that it wasn’t the unseen beast and he turned into the courtyard with a gasp when there was no one there. What the -- He continued to glance around and see if he could catch sight of anything.
And there. Up in the corner of his vision he saw a ring and his face went pale. “Jabberjays….” the moment the word left his lips there was suddenly another scream that sounded just like Caroline. She was being tortured and all logic left his mind as he tried to figure out where it was coming from. But it wasn’t just that one scream, oh no, there was suddenly a cacophony of screams coming at them from all directions.
For a long time Wash’s entire identity had been associated with being a Marine. He had joined to escape an abusive home and had found a new family there. They had given his life meaning and purpose right up until the day his skull was cracked open and the Marines decided he was of no further use to them. Wash was on his third year as a civilian, but his identity as a soldier refused to fade. The Dreams probably had something to do with that as well.
In soldier-mode, Wash approached the courtyard carefully, cautiously, his pistol drawn and at the ready. He listened for Peeta if the other had any form of explanation. All he got was a single word. Jabberjay. The term sounded familiar, something Gale may have mentioned when the two talked about their Dreams. Wash tried to flag something down among the wreckage that still existed as his memory. They were birds, obviously. A creation from the Capital’s asshole labrats, but anything more specific was elusive. Wash was just about to ask Peeta to elaborate when the screaming started anew.
And what a nightmare it was!
Wash stood dumbfounded. He heard the voices of his friends screaming as though they were being horrifically tortured. Wash’s blood pumped cold when he heard Gale’s voice first. Then Leliana’s. Their voices were quickly joined by Lina’s, Salvatore’s and Katou’s. And finally, the scream that rammed itself like a nail into Wash’s ears was Kyu’s. Hearing her voice ring out loud over the others made Wash grip the butt of his gun tighter. He made a wide sweeping arc of the area, desperately looking for the source of those screams - of that scream. It was impossible! Kyu was supposed to be far away from here. He had made sure of that! He had ripped his own heart out and thrown it on the ground so that she would be safe! Somehow Orange County - no Panem - had dragged her back and was killing her. Her and everyone else Wash loved.
A dark fire-like rage bubbled up Wash’s throat like bile. He would kill these sons of bitches with his bare fucking hands! He’d torture them and hear their screams.
“Kyu!” Wash shouted, his voice straining in pitch to be heard above the din that surrounded them. “Kyu! Where are you?! It’s me! It’s Wash. Gale?! Leli!! Tell me where you are!” The only answer he received were more agonized screams of sheer terror and pain. ”Kyu!”
The courtyard itself was still vacant except for the two soldiers. Wash turned to Peeta for help. It took only an instant for him to realize that rational thought had left Peeta far behind. He knew that look of deep rooted shock all too well. Wash narrowed stormy grey eyes and grabbed the other man by the collar of his shirt and pulled him close. “Get your shit together, Mellark!” He hissed at him. “I know this is straight out of your darkest most fucked up nightmares, but if you don’t get it together right fucking now and tell me something useful, they’re going to die!”
The jabberjays weren’t something that Peeta had to deal with in the Arena himself. Katniss had run off immediately after them because they sounded like Prim. The gamemakers apparently considered him a non-entity so they hadn’t bothered to think about torturing any member of his family in order to get something for the jabberjays to drive him crazy with. Johanna had explained what was going on and he had to wait on the other side of the invisible wall for Finnick and Katniss to make it through the attack.
There was a voice in the back of his mind that reminded him that Caroline truly wasn’t being tortured, but he wasn’t alone in not believing it because he could hear Wash calling out as well. He heard some of the same voices- Gale, Leliana - but this wasn’t supposed to be happening. Had they managed to torture their friends to get this or was this some kind of dream fuckery that they could just do this to them?
He was lost in his own thoughts as he was transported to the Arena and his attempt to stay alive. It wasn’t until he was yanked by his collar that green eyes finally came back into focus. Only to stare back at Wash as he hissed at him. That seemed to make things click back into place and he shook his head, “There’s nothing we can do! They’re not actually being tortured, at least I don’t think they are.”
He pushed Wash’s hands away and smoothed down his shirt as he tried to figure out what was going on, “ I don’t know how they managed to capture the screams of the people we know, but they can’t be tortured. I left Caroline at my apartment and she isn’t someone to be kidnapped and tortured. We couldn’t do anything about them in the arena.” He was running his hands over each other as he tried to sort this all out in his mind and he began to pace as his eyes studied the birds that were still continuing to scream at them “We could try killing them, but there’s so many.”
Ok. Peeta was back and functioning again. Good. That was a start and meant Wash wasn’t going to have to smack him to bring him back to reality. He let go of Peeta’s shirt and watched as the other man paced back and forth, watching the birds. He wasn’t making much sense, however, and Wash felt more than a little lost. The constant shrieking wasn’t helping either. Wash’s heart was thudding hard in his chest and all he wanted to do was find his friends and Kyu and stop their suffering and here was Peeta telling him it was all a lie?!
“What are you talking about?” Wash stared at him. No sooner had he asked the question then one of the jabberjays swooped in closer and screamed at them in a voice that Wash didn’t entirely recognize as anyone he knew personally, but could be identified as one of the many voices he and Peeta had been hearing. “It’s the fucking birds…?” he said slowly and with dawning realization. “Fuck me, it’s the birds?!” Now Wash could remember a bit more about what Gale had told him about the jabberjays.
Wash looked up at the swarm around them. He had no choice but believe what Peeta was telling him. None of the people he cared about were being tortured or had been tortured. Leliana would sooner kindly break any wouldbe attacker’s face if they so much as laid an untoward hand on her or her lover. Lina could rain down fire on anyone who attempted to mess with her. Wash had seen her handle three muggers practically on her own. Katou was young, but in no way defenseless. Salvatore was the goddamn ripper. And Kyu...Kyu was gone and safe, tucked away with her parents.
Somehow for the second time in as many months, Orange County had reached into his head and dragged out the thing that scared him the most and shoved it down his throat. “I’m getting really fucking tired of this shit,” he muttered. He reached back for his battle rifle. “I fought the last monster you threw at me and stomped it’s head into the asphalt.” He announced, as if here were talking directly to whatever it was that powered the OC’s weird events. “I’ll gladly do the same thing to your Capital Nightmare Birds.”
He looked over at Peeta. “You couldn’t do anything about the birds in your dreams? Well, buck-up, Mellark. You get to do something about them now.” He took aim and brought down a bird shrieking like Kyu with a single shot. Cold. Calculating. Remorseless. “Have fun.”
“It’s the fucking birds,” Peeta confirmed for him with a solemn expression on his face, “The Capitol used these birds to basically record messages from enemy lines and then repeat it back once they got back to their handlers. I don’t know--” He ran a hand over his face as he tried to figure out how in the hell this was happening, “I don’t know how they got the voices from people we know.” They couldn’t be tortured, but that meant that the jabberjays have been around all week and listening in to various conversations so whomever was manipulating the jabberjays could torture the listeners properly. There had to be someone up there.
This was absolutely driving him insane. It was making him feel like there were actual gamemakers somewhere in Orange County and they were probably sitting back and laughing. He flexed his fingers as he felt his anger rising inside of him and he totally agreed with Wash for being done with all of this and he knew this wasn’t going to help his mental stability once this was over. At least he wasn’t being hijacked with tracker jacker venom this time around. “The arena was split into 12 parts and each section had a barrier and the people that got stuck with the birds were stuck there until the hour was up. They were dead when the hour ended, or maybe merely stunned, but we couldn’t kill them all,” he explained. It was an odd way of doing it, but why waste strength when you truly didn’t need to kill them all.
“They may attack,” he warned Wash as he pulled his own gun out. Katniss had taken one down with her arrow, but he never went after the birds. But he knew this was going to feel so much better as he lifted his gun up and took aim. The bullet he fired went straight for the bird that sounded like Caroline and he couldn’t help but smile a little, “That feels so good. I’m so fucking done with this.”
Wash knew nothing about gamemakers lurking in the background mwahahaha-ing at their expense, but would have loved to get his hands on them so he could be sure that they had mwahahaha-ed their last. For Gale, for Peeta and for everyone else they inflicted this fucking insanity on.
Wash’s expression was blank and cold. He didn’t so much as look at Peeta as the other exposited about the birds. Everything he heard made that rage bubble up more. It coursed through his body in time with the beat of his heart and turned him cold and numb. He heard Peeta’s warning that the birds could attack and made mental note of it, but that did nothing to change his current course of action. He shot quickly and with precision, barely taking the time to aim as he shifted his position to follow the birds’ line of flight. Midrange weaponry was Wash’s specialty. He had been born to fire a gun. Each shot hit it’s target within centimeters. The birds that still twitched on the ground Wash stomped on, just to get them to stop screaming.
Peeta had been right about one thing. There were so fucking many of them and the screaming just wouldn’t stop. It was Epsilon all over again, screaming in his head, begging for help, screaming for relief. Pain. Rage. Wash could sometimes still hear him whispering. Now it was as though Epsilon was screaming again. They all were screaming. Kyu, Gale, Leliana, Salvatore, Katou. Screaming at him, for him, with him.
Click, click, click
Wash ejected the spent mag from the battle rifle and quickly reloaded. “You may be right,” he said to Peeta. His tone was cold, but his voice sounded raw in his throat. “There are too many of them.”
Wash had a sense of destruction that was a lot stronger than Peeta’s. Peeta want these things done, but he had also gotten to the point with this week where he was just over it. His body and mind were getting too tired to deal with this anymore, but he wasn’t going to sit idly by and let them get away with this bullshit. He was echoing Wash’s actions and shooting as many birds as he could out of the sky before he ran out of bullets as well. Then the skin on the back of his neck prickled and he could sense a change in the air.
They weren’t going to get out of here easily. There were too many and it seemed like a mob instinct took over the jabberjays as they begin to change how they were flying on seemed to come together in a group. He wanted to reply to Wash, but then he noticed that they were honing in on them and he reached out to grab Wash’s arm, “We need to get out of here. Now.”
That word triggered something and the jabberjays began to fly down as fast as they could. The last thing Peeta wanted to do was get yet another blood transfusion from Caroline to heal him and he began to ran the way that they came. They just needed to get into a shelter that would block the birds from being able to get to them. There was a coffee shop across the street and Peeta was moving as fast as he could, but the jabberjays were fast and vicious. He could feel the razor sharpness of their beaks slashing across his back.
Wash had no desire to leave the courtyard and give up his position. Not until every single one of these fuckers was dead on the ground. Then and only then would the screaming finally be over and he wouldn’t have it echoing in his ears later on when he tried to sleep next.
Dulled grey eyes watched the birds alter their flight pattern and come together in one massive dark cloud of feather and shriek. There was a moment of odd calmness that came over the courtyard that made the corner of Wash’s eye twitch. He reached for his pistol and yanked it free of its holster just as the swarm descended on them like some kind of bomb.
Wash was aware that Peeta was retreating. Retreating was a damn good idea and Wash knew he should be following suit, but he was so done with this shit. He was tired of running, of hiding, of letting this interrupt his life on every random whim. He was determined to make his stand here and now. Either he came through in control of his fate for the first time in his life, or he died here. Either way he’d get what he wanted.
Fully loaded battle rifle in his right hand, the butt crooked in his elbow to stabilize the normally two-handed weapon and absorb the kick-back. He had his pistol in the other hand. Dual wielding both weapons, Wash let loose with both guns into the thick of the cloud coming directly at him. It was harder to control his shots this way, but his target was considerably larger now and he was determined to take out as many of these birds as possible, as if they were a type of effigy for everything he hated right at that moment.
A number of birds fell, but the group itself remained together. Wash was forced to take a knee when the swarm made their target. He was lost in a blur of feathers and noise. Sharp beaks tore at the exposed skin of his face and neck, ripping swaths of flesh loose. They pulled his hair out by the roots. Wash threw his arms up to protect his face only to have the birds slash at his clothing with their talons. It was difficult for beaks and talons to get through Wash’s flak jacket, but his pants were quickly being torn to shreds and his legs along with them. They were screaming right in his ears now. For a split second Wash thought he was going to die with the death screams of his loved ones as the last thing he would ever hear.
There was a brief break in the flurry of feathers and beaks. Wash caught sight of Peeta several feet away with a number of the birds at his back making quick work of tearing him up something awful.
Shit!
There was no way Wash was going to go out and leave a brother-in-arms to fight this on his own. Fresh adrenaline dumped into his blood giving him a burst of strength to pull himself up to his feet and force his way through the swarm that surrounded him. He used the barrel of his battle rifle as a club to fight so he could break away.
“Get off him!” Wash screamed.
He ran to Peeta grabbing hold of him and pulling him close. He turned his back to the birds using it as a kind of shield for the both of them. The feathered fuckers could have at his flak jacket all they wanted, it would stand up to the abuse.
What. The. Fuck. Peeta had expected Wash to follow along behind him, but apparently Wash was hellbent on doing a one man deus ex machina with that jabberjays and Peeta was able to turn around at the sound of the gunfire and fend off enough of his jabberjays to watch what was going on. Peeta knew it was a lost cause to try and kill all of them in one go, but he also knew how Wash must be feeling at this moment. It reeked of hopelessness and a thirst for revenge and Peeta knew better than try to interrupt any of that. It came from a place deep, deep down inside your soul that you didn’t even know existed until moments like this.
A guttural sound of shock escaped from Peeta’s lips when he saw Wash go down in a flurry of bird feathers and the pop of gunfire. Oh no. This wasn’t actually happening. This was so much like watching Katniss try and survive her time in the arena that he felt his hands begin to shake and he was doing his best to fight off the few jabberjays that remembered he was still standing. The last thing he expected to see was Wash coming towards him even though Peeta could see and smell the blood that was coming off of him.
This would be yet another trip to Caroline to be healed and he was beginning to become slightly light-headed from the events when he felt an arm go around him. Wash was beside him and they were running towards the coffee shop across the street. He didn’t want to be complete dead weight so he instead moved to support Wash since the man was far more injured than he was. “Let me carry you, I can still move, you look like shit,” a small smirk was on his lips as he said that, gallow humors was always something that stayed with him, “We’re almost there, Rambo.”
Well someone had to keep their sense of humor, though Wash didn’t particularly care for the new nickname. Hyde was bad enough, but Rambo? Well, he was dual wielding a battle rifle and a handgun, all he needed now was a red bandana and black hair dye. “I do a pretty good Stallone impression,” he grunted. He didn’t, but that hardly mattered now, did it?
He was in no position to refuse Peeta’s offer to carry him. Adrenalin could take you only so far and Wash had been surviving on quite a bit of it the last several days. So long as Peeta didn’t leave his unprotected back open for attack again, Wash let him support his weight as they ran the best they could to the coffee shop. And given they had a flock of bloodthirsty nightmare birds quite literally on their asses for motivation, they did very well running together.
They made it to the coffee shop, bursting inside and shoving the doors closed behind them in time to hear the thud, thud, thud of bird bodies against the glass. They were safe. For now anyway.
Wash shrugged himself off Peeta’s shoulders. He needed to sit for a minute, let his heart slow down to a more reasonable pace and catch his breath. His pants and the sleeves of his shirt were in absolute tatters and blood was streaming in little rivers down both of his legs and his arms. When he looked up at Peeta next the left side of his vision was blurry and reddish. Oh. Good. Blood in his eye. Fanfuckingtastic. His face must have looked as though he’d gone toe-to-toe with Freddy Krueger.
“You guys never said the games took place in a fucking Hitchcock movie,” he managed between gasps for air. “What. The fuck. Was that?!”
The retort to his Rambo comment made Peeta snort a laugh as he adjusted to get most of Wash’s weight onto his body. At least the comment didn’t make Wash reach over and punch him, so Peeta was going to count that as a win. His prosthetic leg had been put to the test this week and he hoped that it would hold out while he was helping Was out. But if it didn’t then he was going to have a serious discussion with some people at the VA hospital about why they didn’t give him proper steel. It might also involve hitting someone with his leg.
Thankfully it continued to live up to its expectation and Peeta was able to handle the extra load. Keeping their backs covered was the hardest part, but once Wash wasn’t dragging himself along they made a lot faster time. The door to the coffee shop was the golden ticket and Peeta felt himself pushing himself to the breaking point the closer they got to it. It was precarious, but they managed to make it indoors without letting any of the jabberjays inside and Peeta quickly moved to put a table and chairs in front of the doors to keep it barricaded.
“I have no idea,” Peeta gasped as he put his hands on his knees and leaned down to catch his break, “They weren’t that vicious in the Games. Something is rotten in Orange County.” There was something extra put into those jabberjays and he didn’t like that idea.
Once his breath was caught he moved over to inspect Wash. Man, this guy had managed to go through the wringer. Everything was just blood and torn clothing and Peeta wasn’t even sure where to start on this. “Alright, I’m gonna run in back and see if I can find anything you can use on your wounds and maybe as clothes, because you’re going to need some pants. I’ll also bring a bucket of water and whatever first aid I can find. We can’t stay here forever, but I want to get you decent enough to go out and get in the car. I’ve got someone who can heal you if you want.”
“Something’s rotten alright,” Wash agreed. “This is the second month in a row we’ve had fucking monsters come after us and try to kill us.” He was quickly regaining control over his breathing and his heart rate was evening out. “Sometimes I think this place won’t be happy until we’re all dead or completely out of our fucking minds.”
Wash was a Personal Space type of guy due to reasons he’d rather not discuss, but he was too drained from the altercation with the jabberjays to avoid Peeta’s inspection of his wounds. He kept his back against the wall behind him and watched Peeta like a hawk. The man meant well, Wash knew, but at the end of the day he didn’t know Peeta all that well and Wash was one paranoid son of a bitch.
He really was a bloody mess. He was just now starting to feel the pain from the wounds on his face, neck and legs. Some of them were fairly superficial, but a number of them were considerably deeper. Choosing not to retreat had been a terrible idea, a stupid idea. Had she been there, Carolina probably would have taken this opportunity to rip Wash a new one for putting not only his life, but another’s in danger.
“I’ve had worse,” he told Peeta in a subdued voice. He tried to wipe the blood out of his vision and pressed his hand over the wound responsible just above his eyebrow. “What about you? They were all over your back.”
“Well, unfortunately for this place no one around here goes down lightly. I think we’re all used to going down swinging and lasting more rounds than we possibly can,” Peeta had seen a lot in his time here and he knew it would take a lot more to possibly kill him. The part about going out of their minds was far more likely to happen and Peeta hoped that wouldn’t happen either, but this place knew how to push you to the breaking point.
A small smirk appeared on Peeta’s face when asked about the attack on his back and he was only barely feeling the pain. “I’ve been blown up before, this is just a flesh wound,” he commented before standing back up and giving a glance around to his surroundings. He knew that Caroline would heal him up and his scratches didn’t seem anywhere as deep as Wash’s did, “Okay, be right back. Don’t get any ideas about moving from that spot.”
With that comment he made his way into the back of the store and grabbed as many towels and aprons as he possibly could find. He was filling a bucket up with water as he moved around to find their first aid kit and brought it with him. Once the bucket was complete he brought all the supplies out to Wash and set trying to clean up some of the mess as he glanced to the door. There was still a presence of jabberjay outside, but they were starting to move away for new victims, “I think we should be able to get out of here soon.”
“Blown up?” Wash chuckled dryly “that’s way more epic then getting shot in the back. When this shit is over, we need to exchange war stories. I know this really shitty bar with cheap beer. Perfect for swapping stories.” His good eye followed Peeta when he stood up. “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry,” he said with a shrug.
True to his word, Wash remained where he was while Peeta left to fetch supplies. He was thankful the coffee shop was empty, but wondered where the hell everyone was. The shop had obviously been opened that morning considering he and Peeta hadn’t been met by a pair of locked doors during their mad rush to escape - which would have really sucked for the two of them. But that bit of luck aside, where the hell were the employees?
Wash glanced towards the doors. There were still birds out there. It was very possible they had managed to scare off everyone in the shopping district with their nightmare calls before Peeta and Wash had even arrived. He watched the jabberjays fly around outside seemingly disinterested in the shop and the two soldiers within. “I hate birds,” he muttered.
Peeta was back in short order, arms full of make shift supplies, enough to turn the coffee shop into a mini triage center. Again Wash didn’t protest or try to stop him from tending to his wounds. He let Peeta take care of the ones on his face and neck that he couldn’t see or appropriately care for himself while he worked on cleaning up his legs. He was tense, however, muscles coiled tightly as if waiting for something.
“My van’s not far,” he said. “It’s a fucking tank and conveniently has a well stocked first aid kit. Once we’re clear to go we can take it to your healing friend.”
“That actually sounds like something I’d be up for. You gotta love a shitty bar with cheap beer where no one looks at you twice,” Peeta had been to quite a few of those while in the service. He usually didn’t swap stories about his time, but Wash seemed like a decent guy. He needed to get over the hangup of his injury and be fine with speaking about it to other people.
As for the employees. Peeta could only imagine that perhaps the screaming had scared everyone away. The police were a presence around times like these, so they may have ordered some sort of evacuation due to the large influx of the birds. That sort of thing tended to spook people out especially since ‘Birds’ had been made. He was thankful for it being empty because it made this a hell of alot easier, but he also wouldn’t have minded having an extra hand.
“Sounds like a plan to me. Where is it at? Are you feeling up for attempting to run there?” Peeta almost wished he had the ingredients to make some kind of bomb for a distraction, but he really had nothing. He had to hope that the jabberjays would find something far more interesting to do than stick around here. Peeta wrapped a few bandages around Wash and made sure to use a lot of the first aid ointment because he didn’t want anything to possibly get infected (although Caroline’s blood might fix that anyway).
“It’s kinda the only bar that’ll let me in these days,” Wash chuckled. The Shattered Sight incident had been mostly forgotten by the county as a whole, but the fact that Wash had attempted to kill someone in a bar while under its influence followed him around like a ghost. Even now, months later, if he wanted to go somewhere nice, he had to sneak in and that was usually far more effort than Wash wanted to put into just to get drunk.
It’d be nice to have someone to drink with for a change, too. He had his own stories about his service and his general history he wasn’t particularly keen on sharing - things he’d seen and done that he hadn’t even told Kyu about - but, he could tell Peeta about his squad without running the risk of accidentally mistaking him for one of them, though he did remind Wash a lot of North.
He winced, partly at the memory of North, who was now dead and gone in his Dreams, and partly because the first aid ointment stung. For as many times as Wash had been patched back together in his life, he had never gotten used to the sting of bacitracin. At least Peeta was a lot better at this than Ma Barrow ever had been.
“Not too far,” Wash said. “Less than a block that way,” he pointed the way they’d come earlier. “I’d actually just parked it when I ran into you.” He glanced towards the kitchen area where the coffee was made. “Hey, check back there and see if they have anything flammable we can soak one of these towels in. We can wrap it around a mop handle and use it as a torch. They’re freakish, but they’re still goddamn birds. Fire should keep them off our backs while we make a break for it.”
Having a drinking buddy was always something Peeta was up for. He didn’t drink a ton anymore, but it was still nice to go out and be sociable and able to discuss things with someone who understood. Wash would understand the things that he had gone through and it would probably be cathartic for the both of them. There wasn’t a lot of things about being the military that he had told Caroline because he didn’t want to upset her with things like that. She knew enough and that was all that needed to happen.
Patching people up wasn’t Peeta’s specialty, but he had learned a lot that he wouldn’t have while in the military. This stuff was basic, but he was able to make do with it and get Wash cleaned up and hopefully on his way to healing for the moment. He was more than happy to get Wash completely healed up, but he didn’t want to risk anything when they were finally able to escape. And speaking of escape, Wash had just come up with the perfect plan.
The light in Peeta’s eyes turned on and he smiled. “Fantastic idea. They’ll absolutely hate us and if we toast a couple in the process then so be it. Be right back,” he stood back up and made his way to the back. He dug around in back until he managed to find a lighter in a locker and a mop handle. The flammable part was a bit harder and he was managed to find a bottle of rubbing alcohol hidden away and brought it all out to Wash. He wrapped the towel around the handle and dumped the rubbing alcohol on the towel before holding his hand out to Wash, “Alright, you ready to light this shit on fire and get the hell out of here?”
Again, Wash remained where he was while Peeta went to gather the items they needed. While Peeta was gone he finished cleaning and bandaging up his legs. That done, he reached to inspect the data jack in the back of his neck. His fingers felt around to see if the damn birds had gone at it at all. He wasn’t sure of the bio-mechanics of how it and the neural implants connected in his brain, but the last thing he really needed was for a bird to have attempted to rip it out in a fit of ‘Oo! Shiney!’ It seemed alright, however, safe and secure embedded into his neck untampered with. He supposed he was lucky.
Their luck continued to hold out and Peeta returned with the necessary things to create a makeshift torch. Wash watched as the other soldier doused the towel and wrapped it around the handle. All set and ready to go.
He accepted Peeta’s hand and pulled himself up to his feet. He tested the patch-up job and found the bandages to be secure. He was more than capable of moving on his own this time and he gave Peeta a nod. “Light’er up,” he said.
The moment Wash gave him the okay he flicked the lighter and caught the towel on fire. It burned quickly, brightly and a little out of control, so he had to back away just slightly. “Alright, let’s get the hell out of this nightmare.” He stepped forward to push open the door which caught attention of the jabberjays, but the moment the fire went into the outside they flew back from where they had been perched. It seemed to be working and he stepped out and waited for Wash beside him.
He held a towel out to cover up Wash’s back as the two of them went together to the car. Peeta had no qualm about swinging the torch back and forth to keep the jabberjays off of them and get there safely. They were moving as quickly as Wash could since he was the truly injured one. When Peeta caught sight of Wash’s car he let out a sigh, “Let’s make a run for it and get in there.” He was more than happy to ditch the torch and set a small fire if he had to since he didn’t see anything to put it out with.
The torch seemed to be doing its job and the Jabberjays, for the most part, left them alone as the two soldiers emerged from the shop, torch first. Though not moving quite as fast as he would have liked, Wash kept pace alongside Peeta, directing him to where he’d parked earlier.
The van was waiting for them, a beacon of old beat-up well loved hunk of metal on wheels. It may have been Wash’s most prized possession, but he’d never been so happy to see it as he was then. Keys in hand, he unlocked the sliding door.
“Drop the torch,”he told him, indicating the pavement next to them. Once the torch was abandoned and appropriately stepped on to put the fire out, the two of them were able to pile inside the van. The door sliding shut and the two of them safe once more, Wash felt he could breath again. Fatigue was starting to set in and he took a moment before he glanced over at Peeta. “Well, that was fun...where are we going?”
“To my apartment. Just hang a left up here and I’ll give you directions from there,” Peeta answered after taking a couple deep breaths. He was starting to feel quite fatigued, so being in this van was almost akin to being in heaven. Safety was paramount and he was finally happy to be out of this bullshit that was Orange County. At least now they were going to head back to where Caroline was and she would be able to heal them and they would be able to move on to another day, “Thanks for having my back out there. I’m glad I ran into you.” This might be the start of a new friendship and he was pleased to get to know Wash a bit better.