Who: Wash and York What: Dream talk and clearing the air a bit When: Recently Where: The local bar Wash frequents where these things are usually discussed Ratings/Warnings Low, some swearing, some talking about military stuff Status: Complete
The bar was pretty empty given the time of day and week. Wash preferred it this way, actually. The less people meant he didn’t have to worry about people over hearing his conversations and he didn’t have to keep quite the active vigilance he did on busier nights. Given what he had to tell York, the less distractions he had the better.
He arrived before York did, which was probably for the better. He found them a table near the back away from any of the other patrons, his back to the wall so he could still keep a careful eye on the barroom, who came, who left, who was paying them any undue and unnecessary attention, all the things a hyper vigilant paranoid former soldier with untreated PTSD paid attention to.
The jukebox next to him was playing music, someone had decided on a playlist that mainly consisted of late 90’s, early 00’s rock, making Wash a little nostalgic for days gone by. As he waited for York to arrive he ordered a pitcher of beer. He poured himself a glass and went over what he was going to say to York when the other man arrived.
Carolina had already told him about the Dreams, which was good. Wash didn’t have to waste too much time explaining the Dreams themselves, where they came from, what they were. He could get straight to the point. Like with Carolina, Wash felt an obligation to warn York about what was in store for him in the Dreams.
Wash was the sole survivor of Project Freelancer. It was a cruel irony: the weakest member of the squad, the rookie, the butt of all the jokes, the target of the light-hearted hazing, the one who had cracked - he had been the only one to stand-up in the end. The Project had changed him, just as it had changed them all. If York had still been alive when Wash had found him, would he have even recognized the stoic cold-hearted man he’d become?
On good days Wash was able to sort through the mess his memory had become, he was able to understand what had come from the Dreams and what he had lived through here. Seeing York in the park had confused him, and not just because the man had an infant with him. York was dead in his Dreams. Epsilon kept reminding him of that. He had blown up York’s body himself. When Carolina had told him what had happened to their squad during their last deployment, Wash had thought York to be dead here as well. It riddled Wash with guilt. Just like in the Dreams, his own ineptness, his own weakness, had kept him alive while everyone else had gone MIA or perished. If he had just kept moving that day, he would have been deployed with them. Private Jimmy would have stayed alive assigned elsewhere, the schism in the squad would never have happened. York wouldn’t have gone off with Tex. Everyone would have been alright.
Wash emptied his glass and refilled it. He attempted to shake off those feelings of regret and guilt. He had to keep his head as clear as possible in order to make York understand what was coming. He owed the man that much at least.
James--York--was pretty excited to get together with Wash and talk about all this Dream stuff. So far he'd had a couple of Dreams, and it was starting to leak into his real life. He was starting to think of himself as York, again, something that was coming on more and more as he Dreamed. Hearing from Wash about what was going to happen might make him more prepared for things. And they could talk about things in this world, too. York didn't know what to say about all the things that happened after Wash's accident, but he knew that he'd been a total dick, and he wanted to ... try and explain that to Wash. He should never have left Wash's side.
When Wash contacted him about meeting, York jumped at the chance. They needed to reconnect, he thought, to make this all better. York hadn't been very kind when he'd made Wash think that he had a kid. And he felt kinda bad about that. He felt bad about a lot of things.
York stepped through the door at the bar and spotted Wash at the table in the back. Charming as ever, he gave the bartender a smile before pulling off his sunglasses. (They covered his white eye and some of the scarring on the left side of his face, and made it easier for people to look at him. He thought, anyway. He headed back to the table with Wash, and flopped onto the bench to face his friend.
"Beers? Lots of beers?" York asked, reaching for the pitcher.
“Lots of beers,” Wash agreed. He slid the other glass towards York. Interestingly enough, the white eye and scarring didn’t bother Wash at all. It was how York had looked in the Dreams fairly early on and Wash was used to that. It was actually normal as far as Wash was concerned. Which was kind of funny when one thought about it.
Wash had changed a lot since the last time James - York - had seen him. He wasn’t the wide-eyed fresh faced rookie anymore. He was ragged, frayed around the edges from experience and loss. Dark circles framed his eyes and he drank a lot more and a lot easier than he had back then. And yet somehow Wash felt himself again sliding easily back into that old role, just as he had with Carolina. He almost welcomed it. Hopefully he could do a better job explaining things this time around than he had with Carolina. Hopefully he wouldn’t come off sounding as though he were insane. Hell, maybe he even was a little insane.
Wash didn’t know how to ease into the conversation, so he jumped right into it. “You’ve started Dreaming,” he said. “I was afraid you might. Carolina and I...well, I don’t know about Carolina, but I wanted to keep you from having to have them. So I tried pushing you away, hoping maybe you’d leave here. But, you’re stubborn.” He chuckled faintly, “you’ve always been stubborn.”
Wash’s eyes were on his beer glass. His second round was almost gone. “I wasn’t lying when I said I was glad to see you again. I really am. When Carolina told me what had happened after I...got myself blown up...I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. And that...kind of fucked me up, I won’t lie. But now you’re here, alive,” Wash kept having to say the word, as if to convince himself it were true. York was alive, not dead like in the Dreams. The fucking Dreams. Wash frowned darkly at his beer glass. “Carolina explained them to you, right? The Dreams? What they are? That the three of us Dream the same thing?”
York nodded, then poured himself a glass from the pitcher. "Thanks. Lots of beers." He repeated, then set the pitcher down. Funny how it was nearly empty already. York made a mental note to but the next one. They'd need at least two. He gulped from the glass, then set it down on a coaster and gave his attention to Wash while the other man spoke.
Other man. Not younger man, not rookie. Wash was sure different from the last time York had seen him, and though he looked tired, stressed and ragged, he also looked like he'd grown wise beyond his years. York wondered if Wash was more mature than he was now.
"I'm not afraid of the Dreams," York said, turning his good eye to Wash. "And now that I'm here? You'd have to try a whole lot harder to push me away." He'd be leaving Wash, Carolina, his brother and his family, what little life he'd established for himself here. He just couldn't do that. Where else would he go?
"Hey," York reached a hand over to clap Wash on the shoulder It was a friendly gesture. "It's okay. I'm alive, and I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere." He couldn't help but feel the pangs of guilt in his gut--again--and the well of emotion. After he'd left Wash to recover on his own, he'd gone with Carolina, then with Tex, then he'd gotten his own face blown up, and was abandoned to recover on his own, too. Just like Wash. They had a lot in common.
"A little. I'd sort of figured out the rest of it on my own. So you're ahead of me, then, are you? And Carolina's between us?" York wondered if that meant he was going to get a bunch of spoilers. Would that be better or worse?
Wash poured himself another glass of beer and motioned for the bartender to refill the pitcher. He should have gotten them a bottle of whiskey to take shots out of instead, but it was a little late to change now. What was the rhyme? Beer before liquor, never been sicker? Who had taught him that?
Wash looked up at York again. He knew York had nowhere else to go, maybe it was selfish of him to have tried to push him away. York was like him and Carolina in so many ways: abandoned by the military he had so faithfully served and left to wander alone and make sense of civilian life. York had family here, both biological and ...well, he had Carolina and Wash. The squad had been more of a family to Wash than his actual family. If anyone understood that, it was both York and Carolina. Somehow the three of them had managed to find each other again. How had that happened in this large fucking world? Was it fate that the three of them be tied together...or was it something else entirely?
He nodded slowly. “I’ve been Dreaming now for over a year,” he explained. “Carolina started a few months ago. She’s gone a lot quicker than I did, and soon she’ll be…” he trailed off and looked down at his beer. Spoilers. Did he tell York that Carolina was going to die? That Maine threw her off a cliff?
Wash gulped down his beer and set his glass on the table, reaching to refill it even though his glass wasn’t empty yet. “I need to tell you what happens,” he said. “Because it isn’t pretty, man and you need to know, if nothing else than to prepare.” Because Wash sure as hell wished someone had prepared him last July when all this fucking started. It may not have changed anything, he probably would have still gone temporarily insane, but it would have been nice to have been at least given the option to prepare for what was coming.
York grinned a the ordering of another pitcher. He was planning on maintaining a decent buzz for the rest of the night. If not more than a buzz. It seemed like for this conversation, York was gonna need at least a little alcohol in his system. (Also, he was thinking the same thing about the liquor before beer rhyme, and was debating the addition of some hard liquor to their conversation.)
Good thing Wash hadn't succeeded in pushing away either Carolina or York. The three of them needed each other. Now more than ever. Someone had to be there for each of them through the twists and turns of their crazy Dreams and insane events of Orange County.
York's eyes (good and bad) were on Wash as he spoke. He neglected his beer for a moment as he listened. "Soon she'll be?" He asked. But then again, did he want to know? The future of his Dreams? He wasn't sure if that would help or hurt. Would he be waiting for things to happen or would he be relieved to know how things turned out? The look on Wash's face, though, was more convincing than anything else. York frowned just slightly as he realized that Wash needed this almost as much as he did.
"Hit me." York said. "Tell me."
“In the Dreams, as you probably have figured out by now, we’re a squad of highly trained space Marines,” yeah, that still sounded hokey no matter how often Wash said it. “We work for Project Freelancer, a government funded agency - one of many tasked with finding a magic bullet to end the war between mankind and an alien force known as the Covenant.” Isn’t it always a war with some kind of hostile alien race? It’s a common sci-fi trope. Only this wasn’t science fiction. This was real. It was real to Wash, realer to him than it probably should have been. But at last he could talk about it now without slipping and confusing himself for either The Alpha or the Director. Most of the time. “We worked for a man known as The Director. We’re all there. You, me, Carolina, North, South, Maine, Connie… our entire squad. Things were good at first. We completed our missions successfully, we were a team, we had each other’s backs. Then, along the way, things...changed. The focus of the Project shifted. Or maybe we never really understood the Project’s true purpose…”
From there Wash told York everything. He told him about how the squad had infiltrated the high rise to recover (steal) the Sarcophagus. How The Director had fired a laser cannon at the building from orbit while he, Carolina, York and Maine were still inside it. He told him about the Leader Board, how Carolina dominated the coveted top spot. How competitive the board made them. He told him about the A.I., about Delta, York’s A.I. and about The Alpha and what was done to it to get the A.I. fragments. He started to tell him about Epsilon, but found the ghost in his head too loud to say much more other than it was his and held The Alpha’s memories. He switched gears and told York about Tex, how when she showed up everything started to change. He had no idea if she was the catalyst or if things would have turned out how they did regardless. He explained how Tex was different, Who she was. He told him how Carolina didn’t know who she really was. He told him about Eta and Iota and what having two A.I. did to Carolina, but that she was too obsessed with besting Tex that she was willing to do anything, even step over her own teammates she once lead fearlessly and sacrificed for.
The hour was growing late as Wash told York about the fall of Project Freelancer. He told him about Sigma and how the A.I. originally assigned to Carolina had manipulated and eventually overtook Maine. He explained how York and North both went rogue along with Tex and infiltrated the Mother of Invention. He talked about how at the same time everything came crashing down, figuratively and literally, and when the dust had settled Maine was responsible for killing and stealing the Freelancer A.I., that he had brutally ripped Carolina’s from her head. North had gone AWOL with South, York had gone AWOL himself, presumably on his own and somehow Wash alone remained the last Freelancer standing. He talked about being Recovery One, and what the job entailed, how he harboured a deep seeded festering grudge against the Project and The Director. The hardest thing he had to explain was finding York’s body on that deserted island. “I don’t know what you were doing there,” he said, his eyes on the pale amber liquid in his glass. “I wish I did. I wish I had gone with you that day the Mother of Invention went down, but I wasn’t able to. I wasn’t able to save you or North or South, or anyone else. In the end my plan to take down the Project from the inside failed. I failed. The Director is still at large and I went to prison for the Project’s crimes.”
By this time their fourth pitcher of beer was nearly gone, Wash had drank more than his fair share and he had bypassed buzzing and had gone straight to drunk. He raised tired and half-lidded eyes up at York. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet and husky as if he were talking to York’s ghost instead of the living breathing man himself and in that moment he was Agent Washington and not the marine. “I’m so sorry.”
York was silent and still almost the whole time Wash talked. He didn't ask questions, he simply let the information wash over him. He sipped his drink until the glass was empty, then refilled it. Then he emptied and refilled it again. And again. How much time had passed? An hour? Maybe more. York set his glass back down, now drunk from the beers and confused and interested and overwhelmed by the whole story.
But he thought he understood. He’d paid close attention, and somewhere in his drunk mind he thought he’d picked up on it--followed the whole thing. And that, my friend, was quite the accomplishment, considering how many beers had passed through the pair of them.
Wash's apology was the most confusing part of it all. York's scarred face frowned, his brow furrowed. He shook his head, leaning in a little, forearms resting on the table. "You have nothing to apologize for, Wash. Nothing. It wasn't your fault."
Then York took a turn to go sheepish and apologetic. His words had been so sure when he was telling Wash that what happened to Project Freelancer--to him--in the Dreams wasn’t his fault, but now they were tired, slow and a little slurred. “I’m the one who has shit to apologize for. I… I left you. I felt awful about it, I was instructed to, and I was following orders, but that’s no excuse. I should never have left you there. Alone. To recover. You didn’t deserve it, and I’ve been carrying that around with me ever since. I’m so sorry, Wash.”
Wash stared at him, drunk and clearly confused. He had spent so much time talking about the Dreams that he’d become the Agent and ceased to be the Marine. He didn’t understand what York was talking about. What orders? York had sided with Tex, he had been attempting to do what Wash would do a year or so later. Why was he apologizing for that? Wash understood. Hell, had he been capable and knew what Tex had planned before hand, he would have sided with her too…
It took a moment for Wash’s mind to fight through the alcohol’s saturation and realign itself with his reality. He blinked slowly, some clarity returning to grey eyes. “Oh...yeah…” He hadn’t expected to talk about the accident. Waking up alone in that hospital and learning his squad had been reassigned and deployed, he’d felt abandoned, discarded. He’d been hurt, he’d been angry. The years passed and the pain had dulled, but not faded. Certain events in Orange County had made him realize that he hadn’t been angry so much at his squad, but at himself, for what had happened.
Carolina had apologized to Wash as well for leaving him behind and she had apologized for the fact that he had gotten hurt in the first place. All the times he had thought about his squad, never once had he expected any of them to apologize, especially not his CO and her XO. It made him feel awkward, especially considering the circumstances.
He sighed and leaned back in his seat. “It was hard waking up to find out the rest of you had been reassigned. They wouldn’t tell me where you had been deployed. By that time the decision had already been made to discharge me, so I didn’t have the clearence to know.” He paused, “York, you left me because you had to,” he said. “You all still had a job to do.”
"I should have refused," York said, though he knew that Wash was right. If he'd refused, he probably would have been court marshalled. Some dire consequences might have befallen him, so the best thing for him to do was to go with the program. Everything fell to shit after that, and it wasn't long before he found himself in a very similar situation to what he'd left Wash alone to deal with. And then he truly understood what his friend and squadmate had gone through. It was horrible, and he hated himself every day for it.
"Anyway, I'm here now. And I want to make it up to you." He said, then paused. "I want to try and be what we were back on the squad. I mean, here and in the Dreams. I want that friendship." He cleared his throat, realizing how stupid he probably sounded. But he was drunk enough that the filter was gone. "I miss it. And I need all the friends I can get."
“You don’t have to make anything up to me,” Wash shook his head. Even if he wanted York to, he had no idea how the other man would even be able to do that. He gave York a sloppy, drunk grin. “We’re still friends, jackass,” he said. “That never stopped.” The grin faltered a moment and then fell off his face. “I’ve changed, though,” he said. “Carolina has too.” Surely York had noticed that by now, especially about Carolina. “I can’t promise you it’ll be like what it used to be, but I’ll try.”
“Friendship means accepting your friends even when they change,” York replied with a playful grin. He knew that things would be different, now. How could they not be? Years had gone by and so many things were different. They were going to have to figure out what their friendship meant now they were civilians to start. He motioned toward his face. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed? But I changed, too. Externally and internally.” He drained the last of the beer from his glass and set the empty thing down. He’d probably had enough.
Wash looked sheepish. “Yeah...heh, I did notice. You kinda...look like that through most of the Dreams, so for me this look is kind of...normal?” And had also caused Wash a bit of confusion at first, but probably would have caused him a considerable amount of more confusion had the scar and white eye not been present when the two had met again.
“Hey, I Dreamed that Dream.” York said, breaking into a grin. It was something they had in common, at least. There was a bit of comfort in the idea that Wash and Carolina knew what he was talking about when he came up with his insanity. Of course, he felt bad they were so far ahead, but at least now he knew what to expect.
“It’s pretty nice not to be looked at strangely, or to have to explain myself over and over again. I don’t particularly like telling the story. But hey, chicks dig scars, right?” York asked, putting on that teasing, positive, easy-going air again.
Wash was luckier than York in that regard. All of his scars were easily hidden, some of which on the inside. No one was staring at him, or asking uncomfortable questions he didn’t like answering. Well...Carolina did...but...that was kind of her job now. At least no one was staring at him.
“Yeah,” Wash snorted a chuckle. “Chicks dig scars.” Some things never did change. Comforting, that.
York had been told that he could take an exam to get his driver’s license. He wasn’t sure he could still see well enough for it, though. Wasn’t sure he’d ever see well enough again to be able to drive himself around. But hey, it wasn’t so bad. He’d gone home with a girl one night, so maybe he still had game?
“To chicks and scars.” James said, picking up his glass for a toast. But he’d forgotten than he’d drained it, so when he lifted it, it was empty. That made him laugh.
Wash laughed and lazily clinked his glass against York’s before draining what remained it. Their last pitcher was empty now and Wash was good and drunk. Just as he had with Carolina a few months prior with a couple of bottles of tequila, the air between the two former squad mates felt a clearer and more at ease. Wash felt some of that old comradery between the two of them return and it was a good feeling to have. He’d missed it.