York's Interdimension Basket of Washes

[notyourrookie]

York is done with this. Every Wash needs a comfy, happy and most of all, not horrifying and trauma-inducing space where they can feel safe. A place where the horrors that inevitably await them in their own universes cannot intrude.

And York will provide. Even if he has to drag them across universes to do so.

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[notyourrookie]

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."

[churbooseanon]

"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?

[notyourrookie]

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.

[churbooseanon]

"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?"

[notyourrookie]

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."

[churbooseanon]

"There's too much of the Director's bitterness in you," David decides. "Because... people made it harder for him to keep himself together. Look at what he did to his daughter. Look at how he handled his grief. Or really, didn't handle it. He broke himself by refusing to look to others."

He knows it, it's so fresh and raw in his mind. "People don't get in the way. They are what make life worth living."

[notyourrookie]

He hunches up, drawing his knees up again in a defensive gesture. He's not the Director. He's nothing like him. Right? He wouldn't try so hard to bring someone back from the dead.

No, he'll just chase something down single-mindedly, to the point of letting the Meta run roughshod over anyone who gets in his way.

"Carolina's dead," he says softly. "There's no-one left even if I wanted to care." He shakes his head, trying to force himself back to feeling in control. It's not easy. "It's people who did this to us. People have never been a highlight of my life."

[churbooseanon]

"Then find other people," David points out. "Like York here. He's... kind."

But not the same. "Find new people altogether. Do what he can't. Move on."

[notyourrookie]

"He is kind. He is but..." He shifts uncomfortably. He doesn't like thinking about it. It would be too easy to get attached. And then everything will come crashing down.

"I don't think I can. Not yet."

[churbooseanon]

"So you'd actively choose to be like Leonard Church?"

How sad is that? David pities him.

[notyourrookie]

"I'm not like him!" Wash snaps. "I'm nothing like him." How dare he say that! The Director is everything that Wash has tried to destroy.

[churbooseanon]

"You're right. Nothing like him. His obsession was creating something like his wife. Yours is destroying everything he creates. You two aren't alike at all. Your consumed by an obsession that is the only thing to fuel you."

[notyourrookie]

"All I want, is my freedom. If I have to burn him down and every remnant of the project with it, then I will. As soon as I get home, I'm going to hand Epsilon over and then they're going to clear my record and I can do whatever the hell I want."

[churbooseanon]

"Congratulation," David says, voice low and sad and disapproving. "You're officially willing to thrust someone else into the position to be tortured, way to go. You're letting yourself be ruled by obsession. Seems you still have a good bit of him in you."

[notyourrookie]

"If it's a choice between me being in prison again, and someone being able to use Epsilon's information to destroy whatever else the Director has left, then fine. I already know I'm a monster. Might as well live up to it."

[churbooseanon]

"He's the monster and he knows it," David counters. "See, he's too much in your head. But you're not there right now, and it's okay to live in this moment..."

[notyourrookie]

"I'm not him. He's not in my head." It's a lie. Of course he's in his head. Epsilon had left them scattered there, dug in like shards of glass. "I doesn't matter here. But I'm not letting myself be that vulnerable, that stupid and trusting again."

[churbooseanon]

"Being able to trust, to open up to others, to change, that's what makes us different form him," David counters with a frown. "Obsessing is Church. We've always been more flexible than that. Tell me you still remember that."

David was adaptable. That was what made him useful in teams. A great shot and adaptable.

[notyourrookie]

"What I remember, is a stupid kid who was too blinded to see when things went bad, and who thought he mattered to people a hell of a lot more than he did. If I'd been better... if I'd been more useful..."

He shakes his head. "Doesn't matter. He died with Epsilon."

[churbooseanon]

"He didn't," David counters. "Because you know what? The Wash you think you are wouldn't have time or compassion for me. Wouldn't have cared to discuss what we'd been through. But David..."

No, maybe he's not named David. "But that 'kid' you were, you still are. I know it."

[notyourrookie]

"I'm not David. Not anymore. Not for a long time." He hates being called that these days. It feels too personal. Even in the Project, no-one had known that. "You're different. You understand. Sort of."

[churbooseanon]

"You're still David. Because if you aren't... well, I guess that means he won," David assures him. "But you're more removed from everything. I'm not. I saw David in the mirror months ago. For you it was, what, years? I'm close to him. I can see him better in you."

[notyourrookie]

"Yeah, years," Wash agrees tiredly. "Years of being stabbed in the back, lied to and manipulated. I'm tired. Caring is exhausting and eventually you just stop being able to do it. Like after the fifth or sixth time of hallucinating being rescued only to wake up and find that none of it was real."

[churbooseanon]

Well... He reaches out and pulls Wash over into his space, to hug him. Hell, how many times had he wished he could have a hug? This guy needs it.

"I know. It's... I didn't think they were real when they came. But it's different now, things are going to change. That's just how it is."

[notyourrookie]

He flinches at the touch, everything in his body tense when his double pulls him into a hug. He lets out a shuddering breath and relaxes a little. Just a bit.

"I'm glad they were real for someone." That at least one of them had escaped.