#did south get worse after ct left ? Was it ct and north that knew her best ?

[leafatlaw]

sorry how am i meant to be normal about this

[facethroughthemirror]

IN THE END, WE COME RIGHT BACK

CHAPTER FOUR

They’d seen Maine get back up after taking massive amounts of damage. And every time, he would get up and keep swinging, rush his opponents like an angry bull, shrug off the pain like it was nothing. This was Maine. Hulking, indestructible Maine. Maine with god-tier endurance and an adamantine skull. Maine with the strength of, according to Agent Pennsylvania, about twenty-three bears, give or take a bear or two. Maine, who was both the unstoppable force and the immovable object.

But Maine didn’t get up.

Cross-posted on ao3

After North and CT finally left, apparently fed up with being careful around Wash and watching their words, there were no more visitors. Not even one. He thought that maybe he'd seen another freelancer watching them from the observation window a few times, possibly South or Texas from the height, but he couldn't be sure. Honestly, it might've been a nurse, or his own imagination. He didn't really dwell on it when it happened, he'd simply looked up, then back at Maine almost immediately when he realized there was, visibly, no one there. It occurred to him to ask Scarlett, the nurse that had more or less been tasked exclusively with checking on Maine, if anyone was checking in on them, but he figured she was doing enough for them without his needing to bother her about it.

Scarlett had been the best about this whole thing. She was a friendly young woman with blue eyes, and hair in about three shades of pink, this second thing being something that Wash was sure the Director hated, but didn't detract from her ability to do her job. In fact, Wash would argue that it helped. It made her highly visible, and her choices of pink were bright enough so as to be oddly calming. She seemed to have the ability to remain visibly positive, even genuinely cheerful, even when she was up to her shoulders in blood. She had been a civilian nurse before enlisting in the UNSC. She had been shifted to Project Freelancer when the Director had encountered her on a visit to a military hospital to look for medics. But it was her civilian experience that Wash admired and appreciated immensely: it seemed to afford her a certain extra level of genuine compassion, not just for her patients, but for the uninjured who were stubbornly refusing to leave her patients' sides.

She had very patiently showed Wash how to check Maine's bullet wounds and change his bandages, had explained Maine's injuries in as much detail as possible so that Wash was fully up to speed on what was going on, had explained what the IV in Maine's hand was providing him, the specific fluids and medications, and had even explained why the IV was in his hand, rather than in the vein near his elbow. There had been one in his arm during transport, and during surgery itself, but once his blood pressure had been stabilized and he was settled in the Mother of Invention Recovery bay, it had been a little safer for them to start the IV in his hand. That way, if something happened, he had a seizure or a spasm and damaged the vein in his hand, they could remove the IV and replace it further up his arm, away from the damaged area.

Hours bled together, so much so that he was able to spend an entire twenty-four hours by Maine's side, not leaving and hardly sleeping, before even Scarlett had started to drop hints that he was more than welcome to take a walk. Still, Wash adamantly refused, and Scarlett hadn't pushed him out just yet. That had been hours ago by now, probably. He'd lost track of how many times she had been by since then, and even so, her appearance no longer necessarily marked the beginning of a new hour. It wasn't like there was a legion of wounded soldiers flooding Recovery, so Scarlett and the rest of the medical team had been letting their strict routine slip a little, showing up a little after the hour or a little before, sometimes checking in two or three times in the span of an hour or so.

"Good evening, Agent Washington."

He was dozing off again, fading in and out of awareness of his surroundings, entering his second night of keeping watch over Maine, when the voice startled him. He whipped around in his seat to face the new arrival, breathing out a sigh at the sight of a round-faced man dressed not unlike a yoga instructor, with a serene smile on his face that didn't seem to quite reach his eyes. Once he confirmed that it was another freelancer, and not someone that would make him leave for napping, Wash relaxed.

"... hey, man."

Florida breezed forward, settling himself cross-legged on the cot next to Maine's and placing something that had been in his hands down beside himself. He rested his forearms across his knees. "You missed dinner. Again. And you missed lunch. And breakfast."

"Did I? Whoops."

"Well, it's no problem. In fact, I brought you something in case you were starting to get a little hungry." He picked up the object he'd been holding, which the younger agent could now clearly see was a tray from the mess hall, and held it out to him. "Can't have you wasting away down here, now can we?"

Wash scanned the contents of the tray as he took it and set it down beside Maine on his cot, thinking in the back of his mind that it was probably really unlikely that Florida had put it together for him, at least by himself. There was no way Florida knew for sure what he'd eat: they barely knew each other. If he was being honest, sometimes Florida creeped him out a little. He seemed really nice, but sometimes he seemed... too nice. And the way he was always smiling whenever Wash saw him out of armor...

"Some of the others gave me a few ideas about what you might like, even though this doesn't seem to be nearly enough to keep up with our diet," Florida confirmed. "How's the patient doing?"

"... he could be better. But I mean... he could be a lot worse, I guess. But you get that, right?" Wash looked toward the door to the next Recovery bay, thinking immediately of what North had said, about Wyoming and Florida. He then realized that he wasn't sure if he was supposed to know about what North had said. "I-I mean, you and um... you and Wyoming bunk together. And you eat meals together. I assumed you guys are... close, so... h-how is Wyoming anyway? I saw him for a little but just after they brought Maine in, he looked good. Is he out of Recovery yet?"

"Yes, he is. He's resting very comfortably in our bunk. Agent Wyoming will be just fine," Florida said serenely. "And yes, we're very close. I'm sure you understand what that's like."

"... yeah, I do."

Humming to himself as if confirming a thought, Florida nodded at Maine. "So, he hasn't woken up at all, huh?"

That... was a weird question. They'd stopped the sedative in Maine's IV, just kept the regular painkillers going, but those weren't supposed to keep him under. Maine had opened his eyes a few times since they'd cut him down to just painkillers and fluids, but he'd given no indication that he knew where he was, or what was happening, or even that he was actually conscious. The last time it had happened, Wash had told him to go back to sleep, and he had. But whether that was because he was never even really awake or because he was actively listening to Wash was unclear.

"Not... really. He opened his eyes about an hour ago, but he probably won't remember that. He looked... I just told him to go back to sleep. He looked too confused to really be awake."

"How badly was he injured?"

Wash bit his lip, looking away from Florida. "He took ten bullets to the chest and throat. They didn't hit any organs, but one did crack a rib, and he sustained a lot of blunt force trauma. His collarbone took some damage. Basically all of his ribs are damaged to some degree, most of them are just bruised but three are cracked. And his spine's okay but they're being really careful with him for right now."

"How long until he's free to go?"

"He's gonna be off the duty roster for a little while, but once they're sure his spine's not badly damaged and he's okay to be out of here, he can at least go be miserable in his own bunk like CT and Wyoming. If he recovers as fast as he usually does, he may be good to go on shore leave in a couple weeks with the rest of us, as long as he keeps the stress to a minimum."

"Been taking good care of him?"

"The medical team has. The nurse that checks in on him, she's been showing me how to check his stitches and change his bandages. I'm only good at first aid, so this is all new."

"Well, you are being just an excellent little nurse, Agent Washington. But even excellent little nurses need to keep their strength up. So, maybe you try eating a little bit of your dinner. How does that sound?"

Wash really did appreciate Florida bringing him food, but he was sure that if he tried to eat anything, he'd throw it back up from anxiety. But Florida's tone made Wash immediately feel as if he was being threatened, despite the fact that nothing he said was conventionally threatening. By someone who had no qualms with doing something very unpleasant to ensure that his instructions were followed.

He pulled the tray into his lap, picking at some of the food on it before settling for picking up the roll in the corner. He could see the butter shining on it, and a flutter of excitement actually tried to flicker in his chest when he noticed that it was garlic bread. From the roll, he moved on to the fruit, and finally to the chicken. He took his time with it, finally finishing it and wiping his hand off on his jeans. It occurred to him to maybe be embarrassed that he'd eaten an entire meal with just his hand, but he was too tired to care.

"... thanks, dude. I appreciate it." Wash bit down on the inside of his cheek, then looked up at Florida. "And... thanks... for being so chill. I think North and CT are mad at me right now. And Carolina..."

"Of course, Agent Washington, you are very welcome. I like to see anybody's problem as everybody's problem. It could have happened to anyone. But odds are that he'll probably be alright." Florida rose to his feet, then reached over and patted Wash's arm. "And don't you worry about Agent Carolina. She seemed much more chipper today, I think she's processing this whole thing quite well."

Wash nodded again. "Thanks."

"You're very welcome," Florida said again, turning and starting for the door. About halfway, however, he stopped, prompting Wash to turn over his shoulder when his footsteps stopped. He didn't turn around, but what he said was very clearly meant to be heard. "By the way? I never told North that I thought you were gay. Just that I couldn't wait to see how long it would take you and Maine to figure each other out."

Wash's blood ran cold. Had North told Florida about their conversation? No, why would he? There wasn't anything weird or unusual about... wait, fuck, he'd confessed to liking Maine. Dammit, who else knew now?! North wasn't usually part of all the gossip! What the hell?! Wait, had it been CT? Maybe it had been CT. Maybe it was payback for eating her brownie a couple weeks ago. Wait did CT even talk to Florida? She didn't even know about his crush on Maine, did she?

"Now, don't you worry, your secret's safe with me. One switch-hitter to another. Anyway, I'll be sure to tell Agent Wyoming you were asking after him. I know he'll appreciate it." Florida chuckled. It was a quiet, unsettling sound, downright terrifying compared to any of the laughter that Wash had ever heard from him. "Here, I'll take that tray right back to the mess hall for you."

[illumynare]

Red vs Blue Fic: we are a woven thread, find the strand

Summary: Wash wakes up from a coma to find out that all of his friends are dead. Months later, he finds a lost cat in the rain, and starts to live.

Parings: Wash/CT, Yorkalina.

Warnings: Canon-typical language, borderline suicidal thoughts, alcohol abuse, aftermath of canonical character death. THERE’S A HAPPY ENDING I PROMISE.

Notes: Also available on AO3!

My entry for the RvB Reverse Big Bang at @rvbficwars! I was so, so excited to work with @blazonix; please go here to see (and kudo/reblog!) their amazing art for this story.

Story/chapter titles are from "The Breaking Light" by Vienna Teng, which was also my entire writing soundtrack for this project.

1. feel the hollow dream slip away

Every time Wash wakes up, he hopes it was all a dream.

He hopes that Connie will be tucked against his side, new pillow creases pressed into her cheek. That York will be leaning over him, calling, "Hey, Sleeping Beauty" (which usually means that he's written something on Wash's face). That Maine and Carolina will be dragging him out of bed for an early morning run. That North and South will be squabbling in the kitchen, the rich scent of Dakota family buttermilk pancakes wafting through the air.

Wash lies very still with his eyes closed, and he hopes.

But it's never real.

He's always alone.

Eventually, he gets up. Makes coffee. Sits at the little IKEA table and watches the traffic on the street below.

Wonders why he's still here, when everyone else is dead.

#

Sometimes he wakes up after having the dream, and that's worse.

In the dream, he's all alone in a vast wilderness—no, it’s an entire world without color. Gray sky, gray mountains. Gray dust and rocks beneath his feet. He's wearing some kind of heavy armor—he sees gray gloves on his hands—and he's walking, marching, endlessly onwards.

He doesn't know where he's going. He doesn't know why. But ahead of him flutters the only piece of color in the world: a brilliant, glowing blue butterfly. He knows he has to follow it.

Wash has had the dream, off and on, for all his life. But when he was in the coma? For all those six years, he was marching through that gray world, until his legs shook with exhaustion and sweat itched inside his suit. But he couldn't rest, because he knew that somebody was waiting for him. If he followed the blue butterfly long enough, he knew he would find his way home.

Then he woke up, and everyone who had been home to him was dead.

#

Sometimes, his therapist asks if he can remember the accident. Wash always says no.

That's not exactly true.

Here's what he remembers: a bright, bright blue October sky, the cold wind scraping his face raw and making his nose run. He loved it, he's always loved days like that.

He remembers York tagging along to the lab with them, even though he didn't have an internship with Church Industries and really shouldn’t have been allowed past security. South punched his shoulder and said that dumb jocks didn't belong with the cool kids, and York grinned at her and said, "Aw, c'mon. I am the cool kids."

He remembers that Connie had just washed her hair, and it smelled like lavender.

And he remembers the moment it all went wrong, when Carolina suddenly stopped laughing at York as she bent over the instruments. He remembers the soft sound of Connie drawing a quick breath—

And he remembers something after that, but it's just a blur of noise and flashing lights, billowing white smoke and burning, burning, burning.

Sometimes, very late at night, he thinks he can remember a heavy weight pressing down on him, and the nightmare smell of human flesh dissolving under chemicals: Maine, saving his life by taking most of the blast.

His therapist tells him that he needs to come to terms with the memories. Wash just wants to forget.

#

He's grateful for one thing, when he wakes up in the hospital: his nurses don't lie to him. They tell tell him the truth, straight-up.

(Sunny-side up, his brain adds, still loopy on pain medication.)

There was an accident. You've been in a coma for six years. Three of your friends died. All of them were injured.

(Uh-oh, spaghetti-o.)

Wash listens, and even through the haze of drugs, he remembers the fucking day before when Connie told him that she was worried about procedures in the lab. She thought thinks weren't quite right, and he brushed her off—

He thinks, I'm gonna make them pay.

But the next moment, the nurse tells him: A lawsuit found Church Industries criminally liable. Your medical care is being paid for by the settlement.

And that's that.

Wash does research later, when his head is clear. He finds out that Leonard Church committed suicide after losing his company. Dr. Price, the lab supervisor, was banned from ever working in the industry again; he's reduced to living off the meager sales of his tell-all book.

There's no revenge left for Wash to take.

And without that . . . there's no reason for him to be here.

#

They tell him about Connie. She survived the accident. She came to visit him in the hospital, they tell him. First every day and then every week and then every month—she was a professional journalist by then, traveling across the world to cover disasters and atrocities and injustices.

Then there was a car-bomb.

Wash finds the news story and the obituary. He reads them, hunching over and hugging himself. He can’t stop remembering that last, soft breath he heard her draw.

They tell him that York and Carolina survived too, but they haven’t come to visit him in years.

Wash doesn’t try to find them. He doesn’t want to know if they’re dead or they just forgot him.

It doesn’t really matter. Either way, he’s alone now.

#

The money from the settlement gets him a small apartment and a therapist. Wash goes to IKEA and gets a mattress, a table, a chair, a box of silverware, and three mugs. Then he stops. When his therapist prods him, he lies and says that last weekend he got posters and an orchid.

(Connie had an orchid she’d kept since she was fifteen, and it still bloomed purple flowers every year. When Wash was working up his nerve to ask her out, he got an orchid of his own. He thought he could talk to her about it, but it died in the first week.)

He does the exercises that they gave him in the hospital. He talks about his feelings with his therapist. Once a week, he gets a latte at Starbucks and fills out a single job application.

The rest of the time, he sits at his table. Lies on his mattress. Wishes he could stop.

Sometimes he has the dream again, and he wakes up furious. It’s so fucking unfair, that every time he has this dream, he believes he’s got somewhere to go. He believes there’s a reason to keep walking.

Then he wakes up and remembers it isn’t true.

The beautiful, shining blue of that butterfly—it’s just a lie.

One morning Wash wakes up from the dream, and he’s so furious that he throws his mug of coffee at the wall. The sharp crack as it shatters is like a slap to the face; as he stares at the dent and the coffee dripping down the wall, he feels like he’s suddenly waking up.

He’s done his exercises every day. He’s filled out job applications, he’s talked to the therapist. He’s done every fucking thing they told him to do, pretending to keep living, and for what?

Fuck them. Fuck everything.

His arms and legs are suddenly jangling with unfamiliar energy, and he knows what he’s going to do. He walks out of his apartment and down the street to the corner mart. He gets a bottle of whipped-cream flavored vodka, and he starts drinking it as he marches back to his apartment.

#

Halfway through the bottle, he remembers the last time he got really drunk. It was a star-watching party that York had organized, mostly in an attempt to make up with Carolina after one of their fights. But it was a good enough excuse for them all to sit out drinking under the stars, and while York tried and failed to set up the telescope, Wash and Connie snuggled together on a beach towel.

They were both pretty drunk. Connie was telling Wash why she believed in reincarnation, something about quantum entanglement and multiple timelines. Wash couldn’t follow it, his brain too fuzzy from beer and the scent of Connie’s hair.

What he did understand, what he would remember forever after, was this:

“I think there’s a reason we found each other,” she said, twisting to look up at him. “You. Me. All of us. It’s not a coincidence.”

And Wash nodded, because he believed her.

Childhood sucked. High school sucked. College felt like he was starting over, a new person. Suddenly he had friends and a future, and he was so happy, so very happy. When Connie started dating him—when Carolina nodded and said, “Well done,” for the first time—when he qualified for the internship along with the rest of them—

Looking down into Connie’s eyes now, listening to South cackle like a hyena in the distance, he thought it was worth it, all the misery of the earlier years was worth it. Just to find them.

Wash remembers that night as he drinks the vodka, and for the first time since he woke up, he cries.

Because if finding them was the reason for him to be born here, what the fuck is he supposed to do now?

#

Wash's face is covered in sweat as he leans over the toilet, elbows braced against the seat, panting for breath. His mouth and his nose are burning with the sour taste of bile, but he knows there's more to come up—

A hand presses against his shoulder. A deep voice: "Breathe."

"Seriously, rookie?" The second voice is lighter, drawling. "You thought you could out-drink Maine?"

—and it feels like a memory, but he knows it never happened, because the voices are kind of like York and Maine but they're also not, and Wash gives up thinking as he convulses again, more of the vodka leaving his system.

#

When he finally falls asleep, he doesn’t dream about the gray world for once, but starlight in Connie’s eyes.

2. listen to the breathing sea

The next day, Wash’s phone alarm goes off at 11:35. He cringes at the noise and tries to remember why it’s happening.

His 12:00 therapy appointment. The alarm was for him to leave the house, not wake up.

Shit.

Wash crawls out of bed and does his best to ignore the way the room feels like it’s very slightly spinning. He fell asleep in his clothes, so he’s able to just pull on his shoes and stumble out the door into the rain.

He misses the bus by thirty seconds. Wash stares at it trundling away, exhaust puffing white in the cold air. Rain trickles down the back of his neck and patters against his shoulders—he forgot to grab his jacket. He thinks about the not-covered-by-insurance fee for missing an appointment, thinks about his therapist hounding him for answers about why he missed the appointment, and he says, “Well, fuck.”

A shrill meow answers him.

Wash looks up.

In the tree next to the bus stop, on a low branch barely above the level of Wash’s head, there’s a cat crouched into a miserable loaf of damp fur. It’s small, scrawny, but not a kitten. Maybe a year old? It’s got bright blue eyes, and a cream coat with chocolate-tipped face and paws—definitely Siamese, maybe even pure-bred.

The cat meows again. The sound cuts through Wash’s head like a knife, but he smiles anyway. Even if he couldn’t see it, he’d know the breed from that ear-piercing yowl.

“Hey, little guy,” he says. “How’d you get up there?”

It doesn’t seem too high for the cat to the jump—up or down—but it’s not moving from its perch. Maybe it’s scared of the rain. It certainly looks scared, crouched on the branch with its ears back.

“Hey,” Wash says again, and reaches for the cat.

The meow turns into a growl.

Wash stills, his hands just inches away from the cat. “C’mon,” he says softly. “It’s okay, little guy.”

The growl continues, low and steady. Wash waits a couple minutes, but the cat doesn’t seem to be getting any more trusting, and his arms are getting really tired.

He seizes the cat firmly with both hands. It yowls, but doesn’t fight him as he pulls it out of the tree, and as soon as he holds it to his chest, it snuggles against him, purring loudly.

Poor thing just wanted out of the rain.

Wash runs the short distance back to his apartment building. The cat purrs in his arms as he carries it inside and up the stairs, but as soon as the door to his apartment swings shut behind them—

It’s like the cat turns into a living, whirling blender blade. Claws go in all directions and Wash would swear the thing’s spine curves like a pretzel before it bursts of his arms, lands on the floor, and dashes straight into the bathroom.

Wash looks at the scratches on his hands, already starting to bleed. Feels the sting of another scratch on his cheek.

“You fucker,” he says, but he’s hardly angry. There’s this warm feeling in his chest, like he hasn’t felt since he woke up from the coma, and the pain of the scratches makes him feel like he’s finally, actually awake.

He doesn’t have any band-aids or Neosporin. He has to go out to the corner store. When he gets back, he checks—the cat is sitting in his bathtub, glaring up at him. It hisses when it sees him.

“Good boy,” Wash mutters, and goes to tend his wounds.

He’s already making a list in his head. Cat food. Water dish. A litter box. Then maybe a trip to the vet.

He realizes that he’s humming to himself.

And Wash knows this could be someone’s pet, the vet could find a microchip, but even if it doesn’t last forever—he has a cat.

Right now, he’s not alone.

#

The vet tells him that the cat is male, healthy, probably about a year old, and not microchipped.

Wash names him Epsilon.

It’s a funny, pretentious name, and it feels right for a cat who alternates between hiding in corners and hissing, balancing on top of the shower curtain rod to stare at Wash while he’s naked, and draping himself over Wash’s face while he’s trying to sleep.

By the end of the first week, Wash has bled five more times, but he doesn’t care. Because Epsilon talks to him—all day, endlessly, demanding attention just as often as he rejects it.

There’s no more sleeping in till noon, not with Epsilon yowling in his ear and pawing at his face. There’s no more staying inside all day either, because Wash is continually realizing that he needs new things for Epsilon: a litter box scoop. A feather toy. A scratching-post. A cat tree. A bag of catnip.

The catnip sends Epsilon careening off the walls for several minutes. Then he staggers over to Wash and collapses in his lap, purring loudly.

The next morning, Epsilon shoves Wash’s two remaining mugs off the counter, shattering them. Wash groans, and heads back to IKEA. He gets the mugs, and a few cushions—cats like those, don’t they?—and then throws in a few posters, and a plastic orchid that won’t poison Epsilon if he chews on it.

When he gets back to the apartment, Epsilon yowls and trills and winds about his legs, nearly tripping him.

It hits Wash that this is the longest he’s ever been out of the apartment, that Epsilon missed him, and it knocks the wind out of him. He sits down with a thump, and Epsilon climbs into his lap, purring loudly.

Wash rubs the soft fur at the base of Epsilon’s ears, and he tries really hard not to cry.

#

There are still bad days. When Wash wakes up, feeds Epsilon, and then goes right back to bed.

Sometimes, on the bad days, Epsilon cuddles up on Wash’s chest, purring and kneading. Sometimes he dashes around the apartment, yowling and bouncing off the walls. Sometimes he vanishes, and Wash lies morbidly still thinking, He left you he left you just like everyone leaves you, until finally the misery and paranoia are too much. He gets up and hunts through the apartment until he finds Epsilon hiding under the sink or in a pile of laundry.

(One time he finds Epsilon in the dryer, and after pulling him out Wash sits down and panics for nearly twenty minutes. Because he’s heard stories about cats getting killed in dryers, and if Epsilon—if Wash loses one more thing—)

And there are bad weeks, when Wash spends day after day in bed. When he can’t get up the energy to clean the litterbox for three, four—one time even five days, until Epsilon pees on his bed in protest.

Wash knows what cats do, when they can smell a spot where they’ve peed before. He decides it’s easier just to get a new mattress. And when he’s back at IKEA . . . somehow, buying an actual bedframe to go with the mattress doesn’t seem like that much trouble. He gets a nightstand too, because he’s started reading in bed while Epsilon purrs between his feet.

It takes him an entire afternoon to put the bedframe and the nightstand together. But it’s worth it when he flops into  bed that night, and a moment later Epsilon jumps onto the mattress beside him with a burbling trill.

(Epsilon loves hiding under the bed, and also launching himself off the nightstand, knocking it over in the process. Wash curses at him and smiles at him and manages to sleep at night.)

Not everything is okay. Wash still has the dream sometimes, and when he wakes up, his chest is tight with longing and grief and frustration at how fucking unfair the world is.

There’s a day where the emptiness and the unfairness is too much. Wash wakes from the dream, and he ignores Epsilon’s yowling, leaves the apartment and walks right back to the corner store, buys another bottle of whipped-cream vodka and does his best to drink himself senseless.

Epsilon doesn’t comfort Wash when he’s vomiting into the toilet again. He sits two feet away, washing his paw. When Wash is done vomiting he just—lays his head down on the tile and stares at Epsilon.

Generously proud, Epsilon accepts his wordless praise.

And in the morning, Wash has a reason to fight through the headache, get up, and live.

3. feel the ground beneath sweep and sway

It’s Saturday. Wash is sitting in a Starbucks, trying to stay awake as he fills out his fifth job application of the day. He’s started caring a lot more about getting a job ever since it occurred to him that someday Epsilon was probably going to have vet bills. So he’s trying to work hard at the job search, but he didn’t really sleep the night before. First he had nightmares, then Epsilon threw up in three different parts of the apartment. Now he can barely keep awake, despite the coffee.

"Holy shit."

Wash’s eyes snap open, because he knows that voice, he—

—can only think, Holy shit.

Because standing in front of him with a venti caramel frappuccino is York.

He’s older, with scruff on his perfect chin, and an ugly scar cutting across a fucked-up left eye—and why does that seem familiar?—but there's no way Wash could ever fail to recognize the star football player who was North's best friend and Carolina's on-and-off boyfriend.

"Are you—you really are Wash, right?" York laughs a little, scratches at the back of his neck. "I'm not crazy?"

"Yeah," says Wash after a moment. "I mean. It's me."

"Holy shit," York says again. "Lina is not going to believe this. They said you'd never wake up."

Wash's mouth goes dry. "Lina?" he asks.

York is already dragging him out of his seat. “C’mon, you gotta meet her, you can have dinner with us.”

#

York is a high school math teacher. Carolina is married to him and pregnant with their first kid.

Wash isn't sure which part of that he finds more unbelievable.

But Carolina's also running some kind of world-changing software start-up out of her home office, and that part makes sense. Wash is pretty sure that this is actually happening, that he’s not about to wake up to Epsilon licking his face.

It’s still weird, finding out that they’re living only a couple miles from his apartment. That while Wash was unconscious in a hospital bed, they were getting married, renting a house, adopting a pit bull named Delta.

(York and Delta clearly adore each other—Delta climbs on York’s lap as soon as he sits down on the couch, and York scratches Delta’s ears with a gentle expression on his face that Wash has never seen before. Carolina smiles at them, and that’s new as well, the open affection on her face.)

They’re both doing okay. And Wash is glad of that, he is—he keeps thinking, they were dead, even though he never knew that, just worried—but looking at the life they’ve built together, Wash suddenly feels even more like a ghost. Even more broken.

“So what have you been doing?” Carolina asks as they sit down together with cartons of Chinese food—York ordered out, explaining that the kitchen hadn’t recovered from his last attempt at cooking and Carolina was too busy these days.

“I, uh.” Wash pauses. Suddenly the pride he took in the plastic orchid and the nightstand seems pathetic. “I have a cat.”

“Probably still recovering, right?” says York. “Physical therapy is a bitch.”

“Yeah,” says Wash, poking at his orange chicken. He keeps wanting to stare at York’s scar, but whenever he looks at it, there’s a weird, staticky feeling in his head.

Delta whines, and York slips him a piece of chicken.

“So,” says Wash, “last time I saw you two, you were covered in chemical burns.”

The words come out sharper than he intended, but next to his own shitty apartment, this house looks like a postcard. When the soft smile washes off Carolina’s face, Wash feels a smidge of satisfaction.

“Aww, it wasn’t that bad,” York says brightly. “I still have one eye.”

“We were both in the hospital for more than a month,” says Carolina, her voice low, awkward.

“Coulda come to visit,” Wash mutters.

“Dude, you were in a coma,” says York. “I mean, I know I talk a lot, but I like it when people at least say, ‘Shut up, York.’”

Wash knows that’s his cue, that’s he’s supposed to elbow him and say, Shut up, York, and they’ll all laugh just they way they did in college. But he’s six years older and a world more broken, and he can’t play along anymore.

“You fucking left me,” he bursts out, fingers clenching on his chopstick. “I woke up and Connie was dead, everyone was dead, you left me there to rot—”

sterile white walls and Article 12, restraints and pills and how does that make you feel, Agent Washington?

It’s like static screaming through his brain, and it only lasts a moment but it leaves Wash shaky and dizzy, and then he realizes that he’s cracked his chopstick.

That’s not a real memory. He was never locked up like that. He’s not crazy, he’s not—

totally, completely sane

—and then Carolina puts a hand on his shoulder. Wash startles, but manages to meet her eyes.

“Wash,” she says slowly, awkwardly. “I’m sorry. The doctors said you would never wake up. I couldn’t . . .”

“We’d kinda buried all our other friends,” says York. His voice is still light, but there’s a brittleness to his smile now.

You had each other, Wash wants to say. You weren’t alone.

But there are lines in their faces that weren’t there six years ago, when they were all kids in college together.

For the first time, Wash tries to imagine the aftermath: three friends dead, another in a coma. Federal investigators dragging all the dirty secrets of Church Industries into the light. Leonard Church’s suicide. And then—when they’d started to think the disasters were finally over—the car bomb that killed Connie.

Delta huffs and whines for another treat.

“Yeah,” Wash mutters, all the anger draining out of him, the same way it did when he woke up and found there was no revenge for him to get. “Yeah, okay.”

#

The evening gets better. York is just as funny as he used to be, and twenty percent less of an asshole, and Wash enjoys listening to his stories about the high school where he teaches and the crazy ex-army P.E. teacher named Tex. Carolina is quieter, just like always, but she lights up describing the company she’s starting, and Wash is hit all over again by the feeling he had when he met her: This woman is going to change the world.

He still feels reluctant to talk about his life, but he shows them pictures of Epsilon. York gets out a couple beers. They’re finally able to laugh together.

Eventually, York is rolling on the floor with Delta, while Wash and Carolina sit together on the couch, both of them resting their feet on the coffee table.

“I’m sorry,” Carolina says quietly without looking at him, “about the Director.”

“What?” says Wash.

It takes him a moment to realize what she’s talking about, because outside the gleaming laboratories of Church Industries, she never called him the Director. She always said my dad, or sometimes my stupid dad when they’d just had a fight.

“He said the lab was following safety protocols,” Carolina goes on, still watching York and Delta. “I believed him. I shouldn’t have.”

Wash thinks about how she has no visible scars, but she was in the hospital for a month like York; he remembers how proud he was when she said that she’d recommended him for the internship.

How thankful they all were, once upon a time, to Leonard Church.

“I’m not mad about that,” he says. “We all trusted him.”

Carolina sighs. “Except Connie.”

“Yeah,” says Wash, and the grief is just as fresh and sharp as when he woke up and heard she was dead. “Except Connie.”

4. leave the battlefield, leave her hand

Finding York and Carolina should make things better. After all, Wash isn’t alone now. Once a week he has dinner with them, and every day he knows that there’s someone else out there who was in the lab when everything went wrong. His therapist is delighted when he tells her.

Instead, things get worse.

Wash starts having the dream almost every night. But it’s different now. The anger and the sadness that used to come when he woke up are now bleeding backwards into the dream. He trudges through the colorless landscape without hope, and the blue butterfly fluttering before him feels like a mockery.

He’s never getting anywhere. He’s never going home.

One night, in the dream, Wash stops walking. He sits down, a horrible grief aching in his chest.

Beneath him, the colorless rocks tremble slightly as Wash draws his pistol. He looks down the barrel. He sets his finger on the trigger—

And he wakes up sweating and shaking.

Just a dream, he tells himself. It was just a dream.

But it felt real. And not just then in the dream, but even now, when he’s awake. He feels like he nearly died. Like if he had pulled that trigger, it would have torn his mind apart.

(It feels familiar. Like he was killed inside his dreams before, even though Wash can’t remember ever having a dream like that.)

One day he’s filling out a job application, and when it asks for place and date of birth, Wash automatically writes Leonis Minor, 5/1/2519. It takes him a minute to realize the mistake, and then his heart starts pound. Because that year is impossible, but it still feels right, more natural than 1992 even though he knows that’s the year he was born.

In Santa Monica, not Leonis Minor.

That night, as Epsilon kneads into his stomach, Wash keeps thinking the words glassed in 2537. He doesn’t know what they mean.

They don’t mean anything. He knows that.

He’s not crazy.

#

He’s going crazy.

Wash tries not to think it, but he’s getting worse and worse. Sometimes he tells himself, At least I’m not dreaming this stuff, but then his mind crackles with the memory of dreaming someone else’s childhood, of waking up alone and thrashing in restraints.

Once in a while, he remembers waking up and warm hands grabbing him, a voice telling him his name, that he’s okay—

The loneliness that follows remembering that is like a punch to the gut, and Epsilon purring in his arms doesn’t help.

He knows that he should tell his therapist about this, but every time he considers it, he gets that horrifying half-memory of restraints and needles—and then he lies, and his therapist frowns and makes notes on his lack of progress.

Wash does his best to keep going. He has dinner with York and Carolina, he fills out job applications, he talks to his therapist about everything else. He can usually keep it together when there are other people around, but when he’s alone—

He never knows what will set it off, is the problem. He’s chopping zucchini, trying to cook a real dinner for the first time, and he remembers catching a knife out of the air and smugly demanding, You think you’re the only one that’s good with knives? He’s watching a dumb movie about alien invasion, and he has to bolt to the bathroom and vomit because he suddenly remembers the smell of human flesh charred by a plasma rifle.

He sees a YouTube ad with a family singing “Happy Birthday” and he spends the next hour on the edge of tears, and he’s not even sure why.

Finally, one night Wash wakes up at 3 A.M. and can’t go back to sleep. He wanders into the kitchen, thinking of the pop-tarts he bought the day before, and—

Three days after they reach the base and Wash is trying to sneak out in the middle of the night, because they can’t really mean to keep him on their team, not after what he did. He’d rather go before he’s thrown out. But when he tries to slip out through the kitchen, they’re waiting for him.

“Oh! Church! You’re not supposed to be here until we light the candles! THIS IS A SURPRISE. HAPPY BIRTHDAY.”

Wash stares at the six pop-tarts stacked on top of each other and the two sad, half-melted candles. He can’t understand what’s happening, why they’re doing this.

“. . . you call that a cake?”

“Dude, don’t tell me Freelancers are too good for pop-tarts.”

—then the memory’s gone, nothing left but a vague sense of candles and sugar.

It’s gone, but it’s still right there, just below the surface of his mind. Wash sinks to the floor and slumps back against the cupboard. It feels like his mind is breaking and bleeding and there are two lives scraping together in his head, and why is it like this? Why is it always like this?

A voice echoes in his mind—memory is the key—but his memories are a jumbled mess that’s getting worse every day.

Wash leans his head back against the cupboard door and groans.

Beside him, Epsilon meows. Automatically, Wash reaches over to scratch his cheek. The soft, warm touch anchors him a little.

Okay, he thinks. My brain is fucked.

The thought is familiar. Suddenly he feels a little less afraid.

“Okay,” he says again, this time out loud. “I can do this,” and Epsilon purrs in reply.

#

So he remembers a life that isn’t his, that he couldn’t have lived, in a time and place that never existed. That’s completely crazy. But Wash feels like he’s had this problem before. He knows what to do.

If your mind’s in pieces, you sort them out.

Wash gets a journal and writes down everything he remembers. Often there isn’t much he can put into words—just feelings and vague images. But he writes whatever he can, in neat little bullet-point lists, and then he makes himself go through the items, one by one.

It’s less overwhelming that way. He can look at a single line and think, I never got yelled at by a drill sergeant. Because I was never in the army. That memory isn’t real.

Then he can close the journal and put it away in his nightstand.

He can’t pry the memories out of his head. But once they’re on the page—once he’s faced them piecemeal and told himself that each fragment is false—they’re not so overwhelming. He can remember who he is.

Every night in his dreams, Wash follows the butterfly. Sometimes he’s sad or angry—sometimes he yells at the butterfly for putting him through this fucking pointless death march—but he keeps going.

He keeps going.

#

Wash thinks about visiting Connie’s grave, but it’s halfway across the country. Instead, he goes back to their old college. Finds the worn cement bench where they sat on their first date.

It’s early August, between the end of summer session and the start of regular classes, so the campus is quiet. Wash leans back and closes his eyes. The soft, warm breeze strokes through his hair like fingertips. It’s so easy to imagine Connie sitting next to him, smiling the way he remembers.

It’s so easy to imagine her alive, not dead.

Maybe it’s more true, to think of her that way.

All this time, Wash has been thinking that he lost her in the accident. And he did. But Connie survived that day in the lab. She testified against Leonard Church in court and then she outlived him. She graduated, she became a journalist, she had a life.

Wash feels a stirring of that strange double memory, but this time it’s just the thought, More than she got last time.

And he decides that maybe he can believe in quantum entanglement and reincarnation, just a little. Because he wants to believe this life was her second chance. That it wasn’t just a senseless tragedy; that it was something good for her as well.

Maybe they’ll get a third chance together, somewhere in the multiverse, someday.

He’s okay with that.

5. brother, you will return

In the end, what changes his life is two cans of refried beans.

Wash gets them because on his bad days, microwaving a frozen dinner and boiling water for instant ramen both seem like too much work, but he can still get himself to make and eat a cold burrito.

He’s carrying two bags of groceries into his apartment, and he’s not worried about shutting the door behind him because Epsilon never tries to get out. But then the two cans of beans—perilously balanced at the top of their bags—fall out and hit the floor with a clatter.

Epsilon is off like a shot.

Epsilon is always bolting when he hears a loud noise, often shredding Wash’s arms if he happens to be holding him, so it takes Wash a moment to realize that this time is different. That Epsilon ran out.

A moment is all it takes.

Wash drops the bags and bolts after him, but he’s too late. He sees Epsilon’s tail whisking around the corner towards the stairs, and then he’s gone.

It’s okay, Wash tells himself as he hurtles down the stairs. He can’t open the door. He won’t get out.

But when he gets to the bottom, the front door is propped open as a group of movers carry in furniture for a new tenant.

And Epsilon is nowhere to be seen.

For one second, Wash previews hell. He imagines himself running out into the street. Roaming the neighborhood, calling for Epsilon. Putting up posters. Checking the pound. Never seeing his asshole cat again.

He can’t do it. He can’t lose a member of his family again.

Then—

“TUCKER! TUCKER, LOOK, IT IS CHURCH!”

—Wash realizes that he can’t see Epsilon because Epsilon is currently smothered in the arms of the one of the movers. But he sees the tip of Epsilon’s tail flick from under the man’s elbow.

“Hey,” he says, starting forward, “that’s my cat.”

“Oh,” Caboose says, turning around to look at him. “Hello, Wash. Church is my friend too.”

And Wash freezes, because how does Caboose know his name?

How does he know that this huge man with curly hair and wide dark eyes is named Caboose, that he has seventeen sisters and was born on the moon and is surprisingly good at repairing machines?

It’s just one of the crazy half-memories, Wash tells himself. It’s not real. Nobody lives on the moon. Nobody has ever stuck candles in a stack of pop-tarts before singing happy birthday to him.

“Caboose, what the fuck are you— oh holy shit.”

Another one of the movers has come down the stairs, and Wash sees the dreadlocks and the teal polo shirt embroidered with the moving company’s logo, and he knows this man.

“Wash came back,” says Caboose. There’s a loud meow from his arms. “And he brought Church with him!”

“I called him Epsilon,” Wash says numbly.

Tucker grins. “Heh, of course you did.”

Wash can feel things shifting, realigning in his brain, and he doesn’t dare move his head an inch because he thinks he thinks he’s about to understand, and he doesn’t want to lose it again, not this time.

Not moving his head means staring straight at Tucker, though.

His name is Lavernius Tucker and he was born in Detroit and I would trust him with my life and I DON’T EVEN KNOW HIM.

“So . . .” Tucker tilts his head slightly. “Are you crazy in this life? ’Cause that would really suck.”

“No,” says Wash, aware his voice has pitched higher than usual. “I’m not—I don’t—”

“Do you remember us?” asks Tucker, more gently.

This can’t be real. Wash can’t be standing in the foyer of his apartment building, having a conversation with complete strangers about whether he remembers them from a past life.

“It’s okay,” says Caboose. “Tucker didn’t remember me at all until he got blown up. Stupid Tucker.”

“I still can’t believe you actually saved me from an IED,” Tucker grumbles.

They were in the army, Wash realizes. Iraq, or maybe Afghanistan.

Bro, I went through Basic ages ago.

What is the UNSC motto?

“Private Tucker,” he says, and the words feel strange and awkward in his mouth but also completely inevitable.

“Dude, I made Corporal before I got out. And you’re a civilian, so you can’t tell me what to do.” Tucker pauses. “Please don’t tell me you’re some kind of deadly black ops secret agent.”

Wash stares at him.

“Oh shit, you are.”

And Wash laughs. “No,” he says. “I’m—I was a biochem major and then I spent six years in a coma.”

“Wow,” says Tucker. “That sucks.”

It’s exactly the same thing that he said the first time that Wash had told him about Freelancer.

“Why the fuck are you so intense all the time?”

“An AI killed itself inside my brain and all my friends are dead.”

“Wow, that sucks.”

“I think Wash needs a hug,” Caboose announces, dragging his mind back to the present. A moment later, Epsilon yowls as he’s dropped to the floor, and then Caboose’s arms are closed around Wash, his chin is pressing into Wash’s hair.

For a moment, Wash is rigid. It’s literally years since he was touched this much, and he doesn’t know Caboose at all—

But he does know him. He does, and Wash is relaxing into the embrace even before he realizes it.

“Yeah, okay,” Tucker agrees, closing the distance between them, and then he’s hugging Wash as well. “Seriously, dude,” he says. “Don’t ever make us wait like that again.”

Wash closes his eyes. There’s a lump in his throat. He can feel Epsilon weaving in and out through their legs, meowing for attention.

“I won’t,” he says.

He knows, suddenly and completely, that he’s never going to have that dream again. Because of quantum entanglement. Because his team is alive and here and holding him.

Because he’s home.