York (badlocksmith) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-06-06 12:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent carolina, agent washington, agent york |
Who: Agent York, Agent Carolina, and Agent Washington
When: April 7th
Where: Wash’s hospital room
What: Wash finally wakes from his coma
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete!
The view from the window of Wash’s hospital room had not changed much since the Reaper attack. The greyish brown smog kept the mountains behind them hidden from view, but most of the tall buildings dotting the various downtown landscapes still remained. In the distance, Carolina could see construction cranes clearing out the rubble from the buildings that had been demolished. She had heard various rumors about the cause of the destruction. Some said the Great California Earthquakes were coming back. Others were saying a Pacific Rim sequel had gone overboard and the Hollywood executives were now considering moving the entire operation to Canada.
Carolina frankly could care less what the masses thought. Aliens had invaded Orange County and once again the Agency had prevailed and send them to hell. They, in turn, had very nearly taken Shepard with them. Another friend and Marine nearly lost to the enemy. Green eyes shifted from the skyline to the envelope she was idly turning in her hand. History, it seemed, was repeating itself.
She looked back out at the cranes, avoiding the gaze of the only other conscious occupant in the room. It was not the sort of discussion she wanted to have while Wash was in a coma, but it had to happen sometime. Might as well be now. “I need you to cover for me next Wednesday.” Since Kanan had brought her a laptop, Carolina had been taking the morning shifts while York was at work. She waited a beat before elaborating. “I’ve been recalled for a psych eval.” If she passed, then it would be the second time the Corps had pulled her from her brother’s bedside. Honestly, she had been debating ‘losing’ the letter since it had arrived yesterday afternoon. For all the good it would do either of them.
York glanced up from his phone when Carolina spoke. He'd been reading on his Kindle app, something he'd sort of grown addicted to lately, and had to tear himself away. But Carolina always got his attention. Always.
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” neither Wash nor York were eligible to go back. But Carolina was fit. York wasn't sure how Carolina must have felt about that. Or how Wash would feel. He glanced at the younger man, laying still as death in his bed. This didn’t feel like good news.
Carolina looked away from the window and at the younger Marine. The machines were silent, vitals steady and unchanged since Wash had been brought to the room. She wondered if they would continue to stay the same even if she was officially reinstated and deployed once again. Probably. The only silver lining she could find was that without one eye, York would not be subject to the same orders.
“Oh?” Carolina raised an eyebrow at York. That wasn’t exactly the reaction she had expected from him. Then again, there wasn’t much either of them could really do. She had signed her life away to the Corps a long time ago. Too long ago. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to honor her commitment, however. “I’m not going to lie to them.” It would be easy enough and it would guarantee that she would not be called back again, but when had she ever done things the easy way?
“I never said you would.” York said, folding his arms across his chest as he watched her. The light was coming in behind her, making her glow around the edges. He didn’t lie the way this conversation was going. He had so many questions, but the answers weren’t really any of his business. So he didn’t ask. He just stared over at her, more curious than anything. Trying not to judge one way or the other. Trying not to make assumptions. Trying not to imagine what this was going to be like for them. For all of them.
Carolina’s jaw set stubbornly as she watched York cross his arms. She had expected questions. Perhaps a comment about the need for a psych eval before they called her back officially. To be as angry and frustrated as she had been last night when she had first opened the letter. Maybe even an offer to help her dodge her orders. A sharp remark was already on the tip of her tongue when realization hit her like a one-two combo.
Of course York was being calm about this. He had made the same commitment as she had all those years ago. He understood that if she were called back, she would have to leave them both, no matter how much she might wish otherwise. More to the point, she was Carolina. She was his C.O. She was the one who enforced the rules, not the one who tried to work around them. The real problem was the follow up punch: she had wanted him to argue with her and ask her to stay regardless of the consequences.
When the hell did I get so soft?
This time, Carolina’s jaw set for a different reason. There was a person she needed to be right now. “I’m going to draw up a power of attorney before I go. Just in case I get deployed before he wakes up again.” Green eyes were sure and steady for the first time in what felt like months. “I’m going to list you as Wash’s POA if I can’t be reached.” Five minutes ago, it might’ve been a question. Now, she was simply stating a fact.
York nodded. There was no question about it. Even five minutes ago, there wasn’t a question. It was a given. The three of them were more than family. That’s what their assignment did to them--it brought them closer together, made them more than just marines. She was more than just his XO, more than a woman he’d dated. He loved her. Just as much as he loved Wash. (Okay, more than he loved Wash, and in a very very different way.)
“When’s your eval?” York wanted to know when all of this was going to change. When was she going in? How long did Wash have to wake before his sister might be sent away?
Carolina finally turned to face him. Good. This is how she was supposed to be. What she was supposed to do. “Psych eval on Wednesday, physical on Saturday.” Normally she would not be worried about any sort of physical test. Unfortunately, there had been little in the way of exercise that she could do in the small hospital room. Less, after the nurses had caught her trying to set up a pull up bar in the bathroom. There was also the fact that she had lost weight, despite the best efforts of both York and Kanan. She had not often been hungry for anything other than the coffee needed to keep her awake for her virgil.
If she passed both evals, she doubted she would make it very much past her birthday without getting called back. Carolina ran a hand through her hair. Her hair tie had been lost at some point during the night and she hadn’t bothered to see if she had another in her purse. There was so much to do before she went down to Pendleton. So much she had to be away from here to do. Away from Wash. She looked back over at the “sleeping” man. He would understand, just as York did. He would know that she didn’t have a choice. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t feel alone or abandoned anyway.
Another nod. York didn’t like any of it, but he understood. This was the choice they’d made. He wouldn’t wish any injury on her, though things would have been easier if she’d been released because of one. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about going back. Not that York believed she’d have a problem going back… it was just not the best timing in the world.
He opened his mouth to speak, but then he heard something come from Wash’s bed. A change in the other man’s breathing? Or was York’s mind playing tricks on him? He turned to look over at the Rookie, his own breath catching as he listened hard.
The breathing tube had been removed from Wash’s mouth and throat about a week ago when it was determined the man could breathe on his own. Doing so had made the doctors optimistic regarding Wash’s recovery, though they still were unable to give his sister any definitive answers about when Wash would wake up. They had cautioned that it wasn’t unusual for spasms to cause a coma patient to occasionally twitch a finger, or for their eyes to move under their lids. However, continuous movement was a good sign.
And that was what was happening now. The fingers of Wash’s right hand were twitching. It was hard to tell if they were conscious attempts at moving, or simply the types of spasms the doctors had warned them about. Wash’s eyes were moving too, but more importantly, his eyelids were fluttering, as though attempting to open.
The movement also caught Carolina’s attention. All thoughts about Pendleton flew from her mind as soon as Wash’s eyelids began fluttering. She was out of her chair and at his bedside in a flash of red and flannel. One hand moved to push back his hair to get a better look at his face as the other checked his pulse. Her own heart was racing, but her face was calm, sure.
This was definitely different from the small finger twitches the doctor had told her were normal. Different enough to require someone more knowledgeable in the medical field than either of them to figure out what the hell was going on. “York. Get the nurse.” Came the snapped order. Carolina was finally in control of herself again; she had apparently managed to find herself just in time. Leaning in, she tried to see if she could help the man wake. “Wash? Gunney, can you hear me?”
York was there, over Carolina’s shoulder. He leaned in, his heart starting to thunder, then turned on a dime and was out of the room in less than a second to head to the nurse’s station and grab the first scrubs-clad person he laid eyes on.
Wash could hear Carolina. In fact, he’d been hearing Carolina for the past several days. He’d heard a lot of different voices, but he’d been unable to really register or distinguish any of them. They had been like whispers, difficult to distinguish or understand in a thick, thick fog of nothing.
As Carolina and York had discussed Carolina’s eval, their voices had became more distinct and Wash started to feel slightly disoriented. He could feel that he was in an unfamiliar place and the more aware he became, the more disoriented and more uncontrolled panic he felt. His body wasn’t obeying him the way he wanted it to. His arms felt cold and heavy and his eyelids may as well have been made of cement.
He could hear Carolina asking if he could hear her and he wanted to answer. But like in a bad dream, he couldn’t get his mouth open, couldn’t find his voice to utter even a sound. He tried to reach for her, where her voice was coming from.
“Easy, Gunney.” Carolina reached down and gripped Wash’s twitching hand in her own. She wasn’t good with the emotional stuff. She knew that. There was a reason she had chosen a very approachable and personable person as her XO. Encouragement and motivation, however, that she could do.
Glancing up, she could see the machines continued to beep faster and faster as the man clawed his way back to consciousness. “Steady now. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” Carolina’s eyes moved to the door, mentally growling at York to hurry. How long did it take to find a fucking nurse in a hospital, anyway?
Hey, it was only a handful of seconds before York was back in the doorway with the nurse. Emma. The possible love of his life. But right now he wasn’t thinking about the hot nurse, he was thinking about Wash. “His eyes were fluttering,” he said, stepping to the side. He knew there wasn’t anything else he could do--he could just stand and watch and wait.
Emma moved to Wash’s other side, bringing out her little, pen light. She leaned over Wash’s face to open his eyes and shine the light in them, looking for a pupil dialation reaction.
The first thing Emma wanted to determine was whether her patient was having a seizure and sliding into a worse condition. It had been three weeks since he’d been admitted, but Emma had seen coma patients lay completely still for a year or more with no change and suddenly and seemingly for no reason, suffer a seizure or stroke, or any number of other complications that made their condition virtually irreversible. She hoped for the sake of the man’s sister (and for her own safety) that wasn’t happening.
She had routinely checked his pupils over the past several weeks as one of the several points the hospital checked for to determine the severity of the coma. His pupils had always dilated slightly, but she had never gotten the reaction she did the moment she shone the light in his eye.
The brightness seemed to be exactly what Wash needed to push him through that invisible barrier that he’d been struggling against. He was awake. He was aware. He had no idea who he was or who was standing over him. He was aware that he was in pain. It was dulled, but he knew exactly where it was coming from: his ribs, torso and the back of his head. His disorientation dissolved into panic and in a snap fell back on his military training.
He pulled away from the light. He barely had control of his arms, which was in the nurse’s favor. His hand barely missed grasping her throat and caught the front of her scrubs. He lacked the strength to throw her down, but he was able to shove her off of him in an attempt to roll to get away.
Unlike Emma, Carolina had plenty of military training. She may not have known what dilation level was considered normal, but she definitely knew how to spot the panic in those grey eyes. Before the nurse had finished stumbling back, the Marine was there, shoving Wash back by his shoulders and moving to pin him down on the bed.
“Stand down, Gunney!” She snapped, putting every ounce of authority she could muster into the order. Carolina tried to keep her hands and knees away from his side, where she knew his injury was still in the midst of healing. Unfortunately, that also hampered her ability to gain the upper hand. Her muscles strained at the effort. Damn the staff and their ban against her training bar.
While Carolina was fast, York wasn’t quite as fast. He moved forward and caught the startled nurse before she had a chance to hit the ground. “You okay?” He asked, gently, to the beautiful woman in his arms.
She nodded. She was tough as nails, and had been through a lot worse than a gentle shove by a former marine waking from a coma. She nodded, then climbed back up to her feet.
York stepped to the side once the nurse was on her own feet, and a flood of other nurses and doctors and whatever came through the door. They had vitals to take and questions to ask, and York didn’t want to get in the way. He could feel his heart thundering in his chest and his ears, ringing in the news. Wash was awake. Wash was here, with them again. York was so relieved, he thought he might cry.
At first Wash was only aware that he was being pinned down. He didn’t quite put together that it was his own thrashing that was making the pain worse. At first being restrained only made his panic worse. And then Carolina was there, in his face, ordering him to stand down. It took another moment of resistance before Wash’s mind caught up and followed that order. Then he was staring up at her. At Carolina. Carolina. Boss. Wide eyes darted from her towards the other man in the room when he heard his voice. York.
Wash was left gasping as he stared up at them both. He felt lost and confused and even scared. It took a moment of his lips moving before he could manage to get his voice to work. “B-boss! Where am I?”
Relief flooded through Carolina’s veins the moment she heard him speak. He still recognized her. After all the warnings and cautions that the doctors had given her over the past few weeks, she had not known what to expect. They would still likely run more scans and tests to make sure that his brain was functioning as it should, but right now he recognized her and that was all that mattered.
She waited a few beats after Wash had stopped struggling before she risked letting go. There was moisture threatening the corners of her eyes and she cleared her throat in the hopes that it would clear that away as well. “You’re in the hospital, Wash.” Carolina hoped that Wash caught the look she gave the nurse a look out of the corner of her eye. It wasn’t safe to talk here. “You were hit by a car on your way home.”
York stepped aside so that the nurses could come through and read his vitals, take his temperature, all that crap that hospital staff did. He knew that there would be a doctor around soon, too--because that’s what hospitals were for, right? But in the mean time, he moved forward to stand next to Carolina. He brought one hand to touch Wash’s shoulder. “You remember it? The uh… accident?” He added after a quick glance to Carolina.
“Accident?” Wash didn’t understand what they were talking about. He didn’t have any idea what the hell was going on. Carolina said he was in a hospital, and now that the panic was starting to subside, it became apparent to Wash that yes, he was in fact in a hospital. But what were they talking about? A car? An accident?
A woman dressed in cheery looking pink scrubs was at his other side now. Wash’s brain refused to let him make the connection that she was the one that had been shining something into his face. He had a feeling as though she shouldn’t be this close to him, that he needed to hide something from her, but he couldn’t remember what. Barely focused grey eyes looked between York and then Carolina. The way they were casting looks between one another, the way they were speaking, it was evident to their Rookie that they were hiding something too.
He remembered something about an accident. But it wasn’t a car accident. There had been a bang. A bright flash of light. An explosion. Wash remembered the feeling of being thrown back and hitting something. Was that the “accident” they were talking about? It had to have been. The brass must have told them to conceal what had happened. To Wash’s foggy mind, that made sense. But it didn’t explain why he was in a civilian hospital.
As the nurse took his vitals, shards of memory began coming back. The network. The Dreams. Orange County. Kyu. The friends he’d made. All the weird things that had happened over what he believed to be the past two years. His armor. Epsilon. His mental break. Pushing Kyu from his life. Meeting Anna. Gale’s wedding. Carolina turning out to be his sister. His alcoholism. The detox. Was it all real, or had it all been the result of an injured brain attempting to recover?
Wash didn’t know. He had no idea what was real and what wasn’t. That panic was starting to rise again, causing his heart to start racing and his breath to quicken and catch in his throat.
The nurse assumed the signs of anxiety were indications that she was making him nervous. She had seen it before. Coma patients were often anxious and agitated when they first awoke, many times incoherent while their brains attempted to resume normal functionality. The way he kept looking at the man and woman who had been at his side, he obviously trusted them. Perhaps it was best to remove herself from the equation before the anxiety did any damage to his still healing body.
“It’s alright if you don’t remember,” she told him gently. She straightened and stepped away from the bed and turned to address Carolina. “A doctor has been paged, but I’m going to go find one. Please be sure he doesn’t try to move too much. He may get drowsy again and if he wants to sleep again, that’s alright. It’s actually quite normal.”
Carolina had been keeping one eye on Wash, ready to move again if need be, but she turned to give the nurse her full attention. “Thank you.” She had appreciated the nurse’s dedication on more than one occasion in the past few weeks. On top of not filing assault charges, the two of them had come to an agreement when it came to her patient. Carolina let her handle all of the medical care and in turn the doctors and nurses would turn a blind eye to the woman setting up shop in the room. Pull up bars notwithstanding.
She waited a moment after the nurse had left the room, giving the woman time to go a little further down the hall, before turning back to Wash. “How much do you remember?” The words were quiet so that they wouldn’t carry. “I don’t know what happened in your Dreams, but it looks like you had the crap beat out of you.” Another quick look to York. “You were hit in the back of the head pretty damn hard. Probably with something like the butt of a rifle.”
York moved to the doorway and folded his arms across his chest, watching Carolina and Wash talk. He didn’t have a whole lot to add--this was above his pay grade--but he could stand as a lookout in case some nosey doctor or nurse came in to check on Wash. Hopefully Carolina could update Wash on what was happening, remind him of what was going on, so that they wouldn’t accidentally let something slip in front of a non-Dreamer.
Wash still didn’t fully understand what the hell was going on. All he knew for certain was that he had a sudden and very pressing need to not be laying flat on his back any longer. He wanted to get out. He tried to get up, but the attempt made his head swim and a flash of pain strike him extremely hard in his side as if someone hit him as hard as they could with a metal pole. The muscles of his arms gave out and he was on his back again, this time panting as though he’d tried to run a marathon.
He was looking up at Carolina again. He stared at her hard, as if focusing on a particular part of her face would make everything suddenly become crystal clear. It didn’t, of course. “I don’t understand,” he managed once he’d gotten some air back in his lungs. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
Carolina was frowning as she once again moved to hold Wash down against the bed. Gently, this time. “You’re safe, Wash.” Obviously he was not entirely aware of what was going on, much less what happened to land him there in the first place. She made the executive decision to make sure that Wash knew his own situation before anyone outside of the room was informed that he had woken from the coma. The last thing he needed was for someone to come bounding into the room before he was ready to receive them.
“You’re wounded.” Stating the obvious might help cement the situation. Carolina began to list his injuries with a critical tone, as if stating mission difficulties. “You have multiple broken ribs and bruising on your side. Your skull was fractured and you’ve been in a coma for two and a half weeks. You’re not going anywhere until the doc clears you. And even then, you’re not going anywhere other than the apartment, so get all thoughts of running off out of your head now.”
“It came out of your Dreams.” York added, watching Wash over Carolina’s shoulder. He was keeping an eye on the door, but also staying inside so that he could be part of the conversation, too. “I have no idea what happened to you, but it was pretty scary. We thought--” but he stopped there. He wasn’t about to admit he was worried he was going to lose Wash. York cleared his throat, and then turned to glance in the hallway again, keeping an eye out for that doctor.
Carolina didn’t need to hold him down. After the failed attempt to get up, Wash had decided not to try again. Even if he had been able to get up, where the hell was he going to go? Everything hurt badly and he had no idea where he was.
At least what had happened was starting to take more shape. The obvious, of course, being that he was wounded. Things started to fall into place as Carolina listed off the injuries he had. The fractured skull again made him think of what had happened in Nevada, but the added injuries to his ribs reminded him of something else. It was what York said about the dreams that finally made something click.
“Locus,” he breathed out as the name suddenly came to him.
The name was unfamiliar to Carolina, but she had an idea where it was from. Where the hell was her Dream self? Obviously, she trusted Wash to be able to handle the sims. She trusted him to take care of things in this world as well, but if a single person was enough to turn the tides and cause that much damage to a Freelancer, then this Locus was definitely bad news.
“What happened?” Pulling back, Carolina placed her hands on her hips. The first part of a plan to get back at an enemy was always figuring out how the bastard had gotten the drop on you in the first place. If this Locus ever showed up in Orange County, she would personally make sure the asshole regretted even dreaming about attacking her brother.
Satisfied that no doctor or nurse was going to step in and interrupt them, as the hallway was completely empty at the moment, York took a couple steps in to join Carolina. He felt better by her side, anyway. That’s where he belonged. He brought his eyes to Wash, watching and listening intently.
Wash looked back and forth between his two superior officers. Along with Locus’s name, other things were starting to slid into place as well. Donut, Freckles, the non-functioning com tower, the Reds and Blues at each other’s throats (in some cases literally), Wash’s struggle to keep it all together only to be usurped by, of all things, a damn battle droid. And just when he’d gotten everything back on track Felix had showed up and turned everything right on his head.
Wash let out a breath. He didn’t have the energy for all this just yet so for now he opted for the abridged version. “We dropped in the middle of a civil war,” he said tiredly. “Two mercenaries showed up in the canyon about two weeks after you and Epsilon left. One wanted to recruit us for the Army of the New Republic. The other, Locus, he wanted to capture us for the Federal Army. We tried to fight, but I went down. Sarge and Donut went down too. The others escaped, and I don’t know where they are.”
Carolina listened carefully to Wash’s explanation with a deepening frown. New Republic? Federal Army? Was Chorus some sort of Star Wars-esque planet or something? A civil war would also explain the reason why they wanted to get their hands on Freelancer tech. Which meant that her Dream self would eventually come to the same conclusion. Hopefully in time to make sure nothing else happened to Wash.
“I’m sure they’re around somewhere. They’ve certainly survived worse.” Truth be told, Carolina thought the sims a bunch of idiots, but they did have some redeemable qualities. Probably. Although he had only been awake for a handful of minutes, the exchange of explanations seemed to have worn Wash out quite a bit. The nurse had said that drowsiness was normal. They could talk about this more later, when he had gotten used to being awake again.
Carolina shot a look at the door and then again at York before returning to the man on the bed. “You should rest until the doctor comes.” Better not to risk being overheard. The nurse - Emma - had seemed rather determined to find the doctor as soon as possible.
York nodded. He folded his arms across his chest, and brought a thumb up to trail over his lower lip as they talked. It was obvious that Wash needed to rest. As much as eh wanted to spend time with his friend, he also knew that Wash needed medical care.
The nurse, Emma, came in and brushed past York. The doctor was right on her heels. She gave York a wink and a smile, and he returned it. Thankful. Grateful. Relieved. Wash was gonna be okay.