goddamngrenades | RP Open Post

"For two seconds. Then I had you on the ground. Like usual." Worst Freelancer ever. Of All time. Things have changed but Wash still didn't seem like he could check his own six if the objective was right there. Then again situational awareness wasn't exactly rewarded. Survival shit and stealth, all that came from his run in the military before the project.

They didn't get much more than toys and missions and vague, arbitrary training with either. Not exactly conductive to creating solid soldiers.

"You wanna take a lap around, go for it. Just keep it about..." He peers across the clearing, retracing his steps. "...ten yards further out than you normally would. Or you'll get blown up."

"Yeah, like usual," Wash replies, that hard, bitter knot back in his voice. "Guess there really wasn't much reason to come back for me."

He's turning away before York can reply, and part of him wishes he'd gone for a killshot straight off, orders be damned. She'd the last memories of that life, make it easier for everyone involved. Still, worst Freelancer and he was the one stood here now after the rest of them had gone. That counted for something.

"I'll be careful. I'm not a rookie anymore."

"Leave no man behind. Dunno how much time you spent in the military before the project- but that's a thing." It stuck with some of them more than others. North- well. North got out with Theta and South. That's all he cared about. York looked until he found the KIA. Couldn't find anything after that and he'd assumed it to be on the money.

Wash dead and he'd fucked up enough to not have to see it happen.

Then Tex. Then Wyoming. Then Maine and all that. Delta and everyone else. "No. No you're not."

He's something else entirely. York's not sure what to make of it but- whoever Wash reports to? That's who he needs to meet. It doesn't take long for him to swing down and start sorting through what's still good after getting shot up. Pack it up, load it up. Cover the crates that he couldn't fit on the jeep with camo netting.

"Not much," Wash says, shrugging. "I don't even know why I got picked up for the project honestly. Beat being cannon fodder." Out on the front lines. Serve your people, make them proud. His younger self had been an idiot who believed in that stuff. "It's just pretty words and a nice sentiment."

He sort of wishes he could think more of it, believe it a little. But they've got a population to kill. It just doesn't fit with the ethos.

He waves a hand in response and leaves York to pack up. Goes to check the perimeter and, well, report in.

"It's him. It's York."

The silence tells him enough. Carolina isn't happy. About as happy as him.

"Keep him occupied. I'll figure this out." That's the response. She's better at the stone cold thing than she had been back then.

Wash signs off, heads back to York. "You ready?"

"Watch your step." Doesn't bother looking up from where he's lashing down the last crate. It'll hold. It kinda hasta and he probably should just let Wash walk on through the EMP tripwire but that'd knock out his HUD too and that? That's a bitch and a half to get up and running.

"Feel like riding shotgun or do you wanna drive?"

Wash pauses when York says that, then steps carefully over the wire that he'd rigged up. Nice security protocol. Maybe he's not quite as trusting as Wash had thought. He recognises the paranoia. Sees it in himself every day.

"You drive. I'll direct," he replies. "Got better range than you if it does come to a fight."

"Get assigned a shotgun for one op and it's the only thing people think you use." He snorts but slides into the driver's seat anyway. Might as well conserve his ammo until he knows the score.

"You're becoming a stereotype," Wash replied, smirking beneath the helmet. "Besides. Cars hate me. It probably wouldn't even start if I tried to drive."

It was a curse.

"What, still? I thought it was just cuz that guy ran you over the one time. Not that it was a trend." It's kind of unfortunate, cars make shit so much simpler.

Navigating past the traps he'd set took some doing but he manages to squeeze on through, hopping out for a second to close the perimeter behind them before heading along whatever path Wash makes.

"There were... incidents," Wash replies. "It leaves a guy a bit paranoid."

The route is circuitous, avoiding the worst rock falls and places where the road has become impassable. Apparently planet-wide civil war doesn't do great things for infrastructure.

"You've always had lousy luck." Says the Freelancer that could, in some light, have the best. Then again living this long- seeing everything that came after? Surviving the mess and dealing with what it made of him? Not all that lucky.

Maybe he should've just been good.

"Hope you got a pitstop or something up here soon, we're runn'n low on fuel." He'd topped off with what he'd had left at the site but someone put a bullet through his other jerrycan.

"Worst luck ever. Of all time," Wash replies, not bothering to hide his amusement. It almost feels like old times. Back when they'd been friends, or at least colleagues. The banter, the jokes. It's nice.

He bites his lip for a moment, thinking. "Sure. Next left. Got a cache set up for emergencies. There's fuel."

"Can't be that bad, you found me." When he wasn't really trying all that hard to be found. Opposite in fact. Why the hell else catch a ride to the rim of the galaxy? Sure he wasn't implicated in any of the legal mess that surrounded the dismantling of PFL but he couldn't exactly go home either.

It's not even the UNSC he was worried about making trouble for him.

There's a moment, like there's always going to be moments, where he starts to ask D what he thinks- it passes. York goes quiet and still as he reminds himself he's alone in his head while he pulls in at the cache Wash mentioned earlier.

"And we're both stuck on this pit of a planet. At least I'm getting paid for this." All the alien tech that he could ever want and that was just the above board stuff. "Maybe the bad luck rubbed off on you."

Ending up here without a clue what was really going on. That really was bad luck.

The cache is set back into the mountainside, a narrow cave that was almost impossible to see until you were right up to it. Wash hops out of the car and goes to disarm the traps that he'd set. There's fuel in there, enough to get them back to the rebel base.

"Yeah, by who exactly? And how. Cuz that seems like something I should know, seeing as I'm signing on to be a dirty rebel." Idle. Offhand. Completely and totally nonchalant because getting a straight answer from anyone, ever? Not exactly something that happens all that often in these situations.

Wash glances back at him. "I told you. The rebels hired me. They pay me in alien tech we recover. There's a fair amount of it around. God knows why this place was so popular but it works out for me." He pauses, grabs the jerrycan. "Why, you want to cut a deal with them too?"

"Alien tech. Not a ride out of here? Seriously, Wash, none of this shit lying around is good news. Didn't we get enough of playing with this back during the Project?" Some kind of alien is how the fragments happened. How they got half of their untested tech in the first place.

Utah's desperate, frantic gurgling never really goes away when it's too quiet.

"I'll get out of here when the job's done. And the tech sells for a fortune if you have the right buyer." And he knows exactly who to sell to.

He heads back over, closes the traps after him, reactivates them and holds out the jerrycan. "Different priorities these days. I'm getting paid to do what I'm good at. Not a lot of work like that around anymore." He inclines his head. "And I'm not good at a whole lot else."

"And those tend to always have the right kinda priorities, don't they? Just wanna slap it on a shelf and call it good." He's done things he's not all that proud of in the interest of staying off the radar and alive. But there are some things he never touched, never would touch, and would rather just pass right on by.

He takes the can and fills up the tank, keeping Wash on his good side. Habit.

"I'm not the guy to bang on the legitimate employment drum, but of all of us you had the cleanest record. Just say'n. You got options."

"We worked for a black ops program involved in illegal experimentation. I had a fragment of that tear my brain apart twice. What makes you think I care about whether someone has the right priorities. It doesn't matter. Even the good guys are awful."

He leans back against the car, watching York carefully.

"I don't know how to do anything else. Tried when they finally let me go. Didn't work."

"Back then it was fucked up but necessary. There was a war against alien race going on and we were facing down the very real barrel of extinction. Different time for different sins, but now? We're not exactly at war anymore." They shouldn't be. The fight's over, they should get to just- go home.

All he wants is to get enough time underground to go home. That's it.

"See- I'll buy that it didn't work. I don't buy that they let you go."

"It never ends. Not really. We just find someone else to fight against." That was the way it seemed. If that wasn't true, they wouldn't need mercenaries like him around. They'd all be out of business. "And you know as well as I do, winning the war was just an excuse for the Director. It was never the real reason."

He doesn't reply for a moment when York says that, and he can feel the words that remain unsaid beneath it.

"It took a while. But I wasn't as useful as they'd hoped. Why keep around someone who's half crazy and refuses to try another AI?"

"People are always gonna fight. But we don't need to be giving dynamite out to toddlers throwing a fit." There are lines you cross when you're protecting your planet. Red that drenches a ledger. But against your fellow man? Just use a damn bullet. Anything more is just- worse.

"Never gave a damn for his reasons. It was mine for signing on, and why I bailed." Part of it, even. But there's the rest, there. Investments that don't just walk off.

"...This before or after Maine went crazy and killed North?"

"It doesn't matter. I just do the job, and then go my own way. I don't care. I stopped caring a long time ago York."

He couldn't afford it anymore. It caused too much damage. Made him ache and lie awake at night, too fucked up even for nightmares.

The question about Maine and North hurts like that. He's tried forgetting them. Failed. Like he's failed with forgetting everything else where it's all burned into his brain.

"Does it matter? They're both gone."

"When you might be on the line for people that I've faked my death twice to avoid- yeah, kid, it kinda matters." Wash doesn't do intuitive- he's a number two. Well. The kid he knew was a number two, a type B in a group of type As. Yessir, no sir, three bags full sir and a lot of shit can change a guy. That empty space is one he's trying to be aware of.

But.

Most of them did better with direction. And someone is holding the chain here, Wash mentioned calling in. Aside from safety and paranoia, there's reporting in.

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