006: Group Introductions and AMAs - Second Round

[tarnishedavenger]

[Armstrong hates to do this after so many people have introduced themselves in locked channels, but they at least need to put on a show of meeting for Jorgmund's sake.]

So, we've got a few new people here since the last time we did something like this. Time to get introductions done and over with. Just list your name, powers, if any, relevant facts, and, if you feel like it, answer reasonable questions that people have. We'll be able to function together more effectively if we know more about each other. Keep it sensible and try not to wheedle out any dark secrets.

Or, you know, old people can tell people why Taco Tuesday is the best.

Comments

[parannoyed]

But I'm not going to wiggle out of this in the long run, am I?

[bothbarrels]

Wash, listen.

[ North pauses to hopefully give some weight to what he's going to say next. ]

I don't want to be obnoxious about it, but stuff has changed for you and I need to know more about what and why. And I feel like you need to let some of it go, whatever it is. I really get that sense based on a few things you've said.

-> action

[parannoyed]

Need to let some of it go.

[The way his voice contorts and then flattens out into something more hollow doesn't actually prove North wrong.]

Because it's just that easy, right?

[He shakes his head.]

There's a top deck. It should be cooling down outside. I'll meet you there.

[They've been mostly traveling through desert, it seems like, but the air up there is cool when the sun is setting.]

[Wash is already there when North gets up there, leaning against the balcony, looking out into the distance.]

[He can't deny that the dessert they're passing through is beautiful, what with that brightly colored sand and the glass sculptures that can only be from the lightning strikes that sometimes roll in with the storms.]

[He briefly catches sight of North out of the corner of his eyes.]

I already told you most of it.

[He's not entirely sure what's left to say.]

[bothbarrels]

[ North doesn't really have a chance to respond before Wash hangs up, so he heads up to the top deck as instructed. He sees Wash in the distance when he first gets up there, and he watches the lightning strikes in the distance light up Wash's defeated posture.

He doesn't get a chance to speak before Wash begins again, either. He comes fully to Wash's side and settles in beside him, mirroring his posture. ]

Hardly. You just told me about how you found the Alpha and brought down the Project. You didn't tell me...well, a lot of details that in some ways I really felt like you were glossing over. Which is understandable, it really is. But I think you need to talk about it, and I think some of is stuff I deserve to hear.

[parannoyed]

It was an eventful few years. What is it you want to know?

[It's not like he knows where to start.]

[bothbarrels]

Why don't you start at the beginning. You said you were sent to recover my body after I was killed. I had escaped the Project with my sister, so really, the first thing I'd like to know is whether she was anywhere around when you found me. And whether she was okay.

[ Wash has seemed reluctant to discuss North's own death, which means he doesn't even know whether Wash had had any clue the two had still been together after the Project had fallen. ]

[parannoyed]

[Of course that's what he'd want to know first. His fingers tighten on the railing.]

She survived the initial encounter with the Meta - with Maine - but...

That didn't last.

[It's not a full lie, just one of omission. But it's definitely not the full truth.]

[Partly because there's nothing stopping North from just bodily chucking him over the railing to his death.]

[Partly because he's selfish and he doesn't want to spend his entire time here, actually near one of his old friends, with said friend hating his gusts the whole time.]

[Still, if directly asked who did it, he's not going to pin false blame on someone else.]

[bothbarrels]

[ North frowns, looking at him. ]

You're tap-dancing around your words, Wash, like they're going to hurt you. And, now, I don't mean to accuse you, but it seems like you're doing it to avoid telling me something. 'That didn't last,' as if I'm not going to ask how my sister died. Come on, you're not York. You know how to tell a story. At least when it's one you want to tell.

[parannoyed]

[Shit.]

[Shit shit shit.]

[Directly called on it.]

[And he knows something will expose it somehow. He doesn't think he'll be so lucky as to avoid North finding out the truth. Not forever. Not if he insists on digging.]

[Also, when you get right down to it, for the first time in a while, he feels guilty. Because being around an old friend he can maybe almost trust and sitting on something that big feels wrong.]

[And because he learned to be honest, and trusting, and vulnerable, and remorseful, even if he forgot the people that taught him how.]

[Still, he almost starts to openly lie but hears a voice, familiar, and unfamiliar, right on the edge of memory. And the voice says "Wash, dude, what the fuck?" at the prospect of him lying about something that big. And he can't remember who the voice belongs to. (The person's name it - it starts with a "T," he thinks, before giving up on remembering).]

[And because of the guilt, he starts first with the part that will make North hate him most. Almost like he's hoping North shoves him to his death. Not the excuses, not the mitigating factors, not the actually-pretty-good reasoning: both the practicalities and the understandable rage - for himself, since she shot him in the back - but also for North, for North who trusted her, who was protecting others to the very end...]

[He does North the respect of looking him in the eye as he says it.]

I did it. I killed your sister.

[bothbarrels]

[ North takes the admission in, looking Wash in the eye, as he obviously means for North to do. That's...not what he expected to hear. He did expect something about it to be hard, like Wash didn't protect her well enough, or they ended up in a firefight together, or...or something like that. But he didn't expect a flat admission of murder.

North lets the initial emotions wash over him, gripping the hand rail, letting his head hang as he looks away from Wash. Something's going to break pretty soon, and North has a bad enough temper when he's been pushed not to know what it's going to be. One hand goes up and he rubs at his ear, then his cheek. He stop hanging his head, looks out into the desert night—but not at Wash. Not right now. ]

Just...tell me what happened. And no bullshit.

[ He hasn't dealt with anything since he's been here, not really. Not the way he should have tried to do. He had sort of assumed that his sister had gotten away, not been killed. Especially not by a good friend like Wash. ]

[parannoyed]

I found her near your body. She claimed she hadn't seen the attack and I figured it wasn't her because I'd seen other Freelancers, rated higher than the both of us, who'd been killed by an unknown assailant.

[He reports it in the stiff, clipped tones, you report to a superior with, like he can't talk about this - the betrayal and the revenge - with emotion allowed in his voice.]

I trusted her. I even protected her from Command by lying that she'd been killed, so she could continue staying hidden. I asked for her help, though I won't pretend I didn't twist her arm a little. But she agreed.

She paid me back by shooting me in the back, stealing Delta, and leaving me for dead to distract the Meta. I barely survived.

[It had partly been because he needed the backup against Maine but finding a live Freelancer on a recovery run probably wouldn't prompted Wash to do the same for most of them.]

Later on, when we ran into each other again, she was injured by one of the Sim Troopers I was working with and couldn't walk. I had to decide whether to struggle with bringing her along.

Delta pointed out that she was a liability and couldn't be trusted. Apparently she'd already tried giving him up to the Meta to bargain for her own escape.

[Strangely, what he says next? This is the part where he can't look North in the eye. Not for the rest.]

He also said that during their time together he found out she'd done the same to you. She set you up and cut a deal with Maine to save her own skin.

[If he'd had any hesitation left at all at that point, that had destroyed it.]

That's why I had to answer your beacon.

[bothbarrels]

[ He takes the whole thing in silently, except that as it continues he begins breathing more and more heavily. He's always been a guy who's pretty in touch with his own emotions. But right now he's not sure what they're doing. All of this news about South's behavior, well, he wishes it had taken him by surprise, wishes he could snap back that 'that's impossible' and 'she would never do something like that'.

Thing is, he knows his sister. Loves his sister. And...knows she's more than capable of doing everything Wash has just said.

North hangs his head again. They're in an odd situation where he's left at a loss for words and Theta's mentally consoling him—not because of his sister's death, but because of his lack of ability to sort through his emotions regarding the whole tale. Theta's learned a lot from North, though. He gives North a mental hug and then backs off, watching, waiting.

North shakes his head, closes his eyes; thinks about Tex's words calling South a 'vulture' and his own calling South's quest for an AI 'inappropriate'; thinks about his attempts to prove to himself that she wasn't like that, that he'd been able to explain to her a way to be better; thinks about the two years that followed the Project's dissolution, and their life on the run.

It hadn't worked. She hadn't been better.

But he's lost himself, hasn't he? Wash is still standing there. Wash, who had just admitted to killing her, but who has now also justified the action by explaining what prompted it. North tries to look at him but can't. he hangs his head again. ]

I can't talk to you right now.

[ His voice is thick, so he can't explain any further. He's not upset with Wash, at least not the way maybe he should be, but he needs to have a bit of a catharsis at realizing his sister really is dead. And that she forced Wash's hand in that way...he's almost more angry at her than he is at Wash.

He swallows to try to speak again. ]

We'll finish this...later...

[ Yeah, he's going to fucking cry.

He doesn't intend to leave this spot. Wash can leave if he feels bad watching North cry. But North doesn't want to go inside where there are a bunch of people he doesn't know and cry there. ]

[parannoyed]

[Wash's eyes get the tiniest bit glassy. He's inured himself to the death of old friends, but their grief...]

[South's grief had been false, in the end. And maybe that's why it hadn't inspired any real feeling. It also didn't hurt that they hadn't exactly been close. She used to bite Wash's head off at every turn, especially whenever he said something intended to be kind or reassuring.]

[He'd been closer to North. In fact, North had been one of the Freelancers he'd been closest to. Wash knows it's a genuine grief borne out of genuine, selfless love, and that makes it harder to watch. It's something real, even if South didn't deserve it, and the pain is from more than death, no doubt it's from betrayal and disappointment, too. Watching someone that loyal and nurturing suffer is worse than picking over a corpse and blowing it up.]

[Good thing then that North doesn't want to talk to him anymore right now. Wash walks away. He hesitates near the roof door.]

[His voice hasn't lost the cold, clipped tone, but he wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it:]

For what it's worth, I'm sorry it came to that.

[He won't apologize for doing it but he is sorry she forced his hand. Even removing the anger over his own and North's betrayal, she'd made it very clear that she couldn't be trusted, if she'd been willing to set up her own brother. She absolutely would've tried to betray him and Delta again.]

If you want to talk to me again [If. It's not a given] - or want revenge - you know where to find me. If it's the latter, I won't hold back, but I won't blame you if you decide to come after me.

[He doesn't realize the double tragedy he's just unleashed with those words. Not only has he just told North he killed his sister, but the fact he expects someone to try to make him suffer over it, makes it clear Wash is just utterly, completely broken, too. Enough he could kill her without hesitation. Enough that he can't foresee any situation where someone might nod and say "your life is worth enough that you had to do what you had to."]

[He knows no one would ever say his life was worth more than the lives of any of the others that died. You could go to any Freelancer and weigh his life against the life of one of the others and he knows how the scales would tip every time.]

[It's not like anyone had ever tried to send a secure message, or come for him, even on a mission away from base, where they could've tried to see where his loyalties lay. And he gets why, he doesn't blame any of them for it. They were trying to stay in hiding. He gets why he - the idiot rookie - would always be weighed against the lives of any of the others and would be found wanting.]

[So there is no anger or resentment over it, just the rock solid knowledge that whatever bubble the others had all existed in, of "people who mattered," had likely never included him.]

[The idea that he might be forgiven, or that North might be willing to try to mend the frayed edges of a friendship broken by time and Wash's own actions, doesn't even occur to him. As far as he sees it, the most likely outcome is that his friend will try to kill him, due to an anger and grief that are very human and understandable. Maybe even justified, regardless of what South had done. And if not that, North will never want to talk to him again. And he'll just have to accept that.]

[Freelancer would leave no friendship unbroken in the end, and Wash was - and will remain - alone. That's just how the world works.]

[With that, he opens the door to walk away, leaving his friend to his pain.]

[bothbarrels]

[ North doesn't move. He would, if he wasn't stifling something, something that would probably be a big old sob if he tried to speak.

Eventually, he comes inside, but it's not to seek out Wash, just to clean up his face and have a big long heart-to-heart with Theta, who at this current moment seems to need it more. Wash thinks he hates him, and Wash is wrong, but North can deal with clearing the air on that later. ]