kittencafe | York's Interdimension Basket of Washes

Christ, that makes him feel old. Old and worn out, cynical and bitter. "It's like an anchor. Something you can find your way back to and work outwards from there. And it's not easy. And I still wake up some days and don't know who I am. But it's better than nothing."

"Every morning when I wake up I have to lay there for an hour to try and piece together what is mine and what is theirs and what isn't important. I'm... getting bad at it."

"I don't know what I can say. It passed for me, eventually. Enough to convince them that I was sane, to get put on active duty again. I fooled them."

"Wish I could fool myself," Wash sighs, shaking his head and looking away.

"Probably did that too. But even I can't argue that my methods were in any way healthy."

"Is there a way to be healthy about this?" David asks, because he doubts it.

"No idea, but I'm sure psychologists could base entire careers off us," he says with a small smile.

"Pretty sure Price wanted to," David groans, finally settling down a bit. Finally someone he won't worry too much by talking about the whole fucked up time on the med ship. "I wasn't even given a fork at meals. I had to use a SPOON to spread butter. What the fuck?"

"Oh I don't doubt that," Wash replies, grimacing. Part of him loathes the Counsellor more than the Director. The same part that is more scared of him. Not that he's admitting that.

"And the staff talking like you're a really stupid child. No I don't want to take my fucking meds because I know they're just going to fuck with my head."

"The two way mirror," David says, shaking. "Their insistence that they take the armor, that you wear civilized clothes. The insistent that you are going to hurt yourself..."

Not that it hadn't occurred to him to do.

"Pyjamas and scrubs are not civilised clothes," he says derisively. But they'd been made to ensure he couldn't hide anything, couldn't cause any damage to himself with them.

"The restraints when you try," he says more quietly. All the times he'd tries to claw his neck open to make it stop. All the times he'd thought about ending it, even started, because it hurt too much.

David shakes his head, looking away. "If I didn't have them... I might have tried a lot more. I tried to break the mirror once, when I was angry."

"Would've smashed everything if I'd had chance," he replies. "Wanted to. Wanted to tear them all apart with my bare hands if I couldn't find anything else."

"I know," David says quietly. "They... gave me this shrink who was so scared of me. But I knew Price was listening. It... I was going crazier there."

"'Course you were. They never meant for you to leave. Can't have people going around thinking they're sane when they've got information to extract and theories to test."

"What is sanity?" David sighs, shaking his head. "I'm not sane. I know that. We're not sane. The world around us fell apart, and it wasn't our fault."

It isn't his fault. He has to keep telling himself.

"Or we're the only sane ones," Wash replies. He likes that better. Sometimes it feels that way. Surrounded by crazy people and he's the bastion of stability.

"In the end, the only person we can trust is ourselves. Everyone else is against us."

"It's... not true though," David says cautiously. Not for him. He trusts his lovers so much. Trusts Texas and Niner. Trusts Delta and Theta.

"All people do is screw you over. Better to not risk it. In the end you just get disappointed." He's still bracing himself for it here. He has a bag packed, a bank account set up elsewhere, all so that he can run when he needs to.

No, he can't take this anymore.

"You're wrong," David says, voice sharp. "You're so wrong. Maybe... maybe you're just too cold for people to be there for you sometimes. Because... Because they came for me. They're going to come for me again. Here. They're going to find me..."

Wash pulls away as though he's been burnt, staring at the other him with wide-eyes. And it's so close to what the one from here had said too. And it hurts to hear from someone who should have understood.

But no, they'd gone back for him hadn't they? He'd never been abandoned by people who were supposed to be his friends.

"You think i was like this before?" he snaps, hands clenching into fists. "I did what I had to to survive. I had to pretend like I couldn't remember being tortured when just the sight of them made me want to puke. Couldn't trust anyone because they might find out. And then the people I did trust shot me in the back and fucked me over and got me locked up again. If that's people being there for me, I'm better off without."

"They wouldn't leave me," David repeats, ignoring Wash, his voice more than a little desperate. It's not that he thinks Wash really was like that. It's just...

It's too recent, too terrifying to think they might have left him. They loved him. How could they do that?

Maybe it was just him. Maybe out of every universe, it was just him who'd been abandoned. Not good enough, not strong enough, not smart enough. Why else would they leave him? Over and over again.

"I don't need anyone," he says, trying to convince himself more than anything.

"We need people more than anyone," David counters, carefully looking at Wash out of the corner of his eyes. "Because how do we remain us otherwise?"

Wash shakes his head. "People get in the way. Make it harder to... to keep myself together. If I need people then I'm vulnerable."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject