AGENT WASHINGTON

[parannoyed]

● AGENT WASHINGTON
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[parannoyed]

[If only.]

Personal experience says otherwise.

[When you outlive everyone, you acquire more trouble.]

[Like brain damage.]

[That people can use as leverage.]

[bothbarrels]

That's a really...

[ North pauses and shakes his head. ]

It just doesn't sound like you, Wash. It's...

[ He sighs, unable to figure out how to finish that sentence. ]

[parannoyed]

[He pulls a face at him, but it's not a deeply rooted anger, more like an annoyed muppet face.]

He's gone. The person you remember.

[He doesn't want to keep being all dramatic and "Wash is dead" about things, but...]

Maybe I can be something new. Apparently, I became something different for Tucker and his friends and Carolina. But I doubt that person was exactly the same one I used to be.

He's gone and you're going to have to get used to that.

[Dopey rookie Wash could only exist before everything that happened.]

[bothbarrels]

Yeah. Yeah, understood, and...I mean, I've changed over the years. It just seems so extreme in some ways. I hope it's not too bothersome to you, it's just hard to get used to.

[ But he sees it even in the way Wash looks—he has frown lines, and bags under his eyes, things young Wash never had. ]

Anyway. I don't want to become another cause of frustration.

[parannoyed]

I...I at least get where it's coming from.

[And he's slowly coming out of his haze of constantly on edge energy.]

You and York... you never wanted me to go through what I did.

[They may have left him there, chosen to save someone else or themselves. But he knows his old friends didn't actually want him to suffer.]

To be honest, I didn't really know until recently that you both cared that much.

[Which means he doesn't mind seeing that they do.]

That anyone did.

[His eyes drop to the clover he's shredding.]

[bothbarrels]

Of course we did, Wash. I would probably have tried to come after you if South and I hadn't fought to the point we did.

[ He pauses. Maybe Wash doesn't realize what extent that got to. ]

You know I shot her, right?

[parannoyed]

[That actually makes him look over, eyebrows raised in interest.]

[Dryly.]

Shame it didn't take.

[But there's not as much venom in it as in the past. He just is incapable of being anything other than catty.]

[Then he remembers he murdered her, whoops.]

[He winces.]

Probably shouldn't joke about that.

[At least not to North.]

[At least it's less bad when she's here now, capable of being, ughughugh, saved.]

[bothbarrels]

[ North shakes his head—the same rueful 'this is what I have to put up with' headshake he gave when South had outbursts in the classroom back at Freelancer. ]

Please don't.

[ He moves his legs to hug one of his knees. ]

Point being that I didn't just forget about you, Wash.

[parannoyed]

[He'd been completely on edge coming into this place. Dull and dead inside. Cold.]

[It has been a gradual thawing. And it's still slow.]

[But it's happening. Ice gradually sloughing off.]

[He opens his mouth. Closes it.]

[Looks at him sidelong, eyes a little glassy, looks away.]

Mm hmm.

[It's the safest thing to say because North won't hear his voice crack with it.]

[But there's still a tremor in his voice with those two syllables anyway.]

[bothbarrels]

[ As much as Wash gives lip service to that being ancient history, it obviously still affects him. And how could it not? The fact that saying this outright seems to have given him pause in whatever measure means North is going to let things hang like that for a time, in silence.

Eventually he stirs a bit and decides to change the subject. ]

So do you help out here much? In the garden, I mean.

[parannoyed]

I don't help out here. I just like spending some time here.

[He looks out at all the green.]

It reminds me of something but I can't really remember what. Maybe the moon I lived on with Carolina and Tucker and the others?

[bothbarrels]

[ North looks out at the green as well. ]

There weren't many spots on the sim base planet that were this green, so I haven't seen this kind of view in a long time.