Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You don’t have to do this.”

She doesn’t answer. She just keeps packing, shoving things angrily into her bag without looking at him. There’s not much to put in there; they all came here with nothing at all.

He steps closer.

“Connie, you don’t have to do this. We’re in this together, remember? We’ll figure it out.” He puts his hand on her shoulder. “Hey.”

She jerks away, angrily, whipping her head around to glare at him and pushing past him.

“Don’t touch me!”

Wash drops his hand, turning with a sigh to watch her as she moves to the closet and yanks it open.

“Just listen, okay? Please. I can help you. We can get through this, Connie.”

“No we can’t.”

She doesn’t stop, pulling out her single set of civilian clothes and just looking at it a moment before balling it up and sticking it into the bag with everything else. She looks up at Wash, and he knows, just from looking, that he’s not going to convince her to stay.

What she says manages to surprise him anyway.

“Come with me.”

The idea seems to grab hold of her as soon as she says it, and she steps closer, making him back up a step. “Come with me, Wash, we can get out of this, we  both  can. There’s nothing left here. Nothing we want to be a part of.”

He shakes his head, disbelieving, not understanding. “What-? No. You’re overreacting. Listen, we’ll talk to the Director, it’ll be okay -”

“No!”

The vehemence behind her words surprises him, and then it doesn’t, as a deep frown creases his face. She’s been like this for weeks,  months even, suspicious and angry and hurt, and all of it focused on the Director. She’d tried to explain, to tell him -  he’s using us, he doesn’t care about us, how can you not see what he’s doing  – but it had all fallen on deaf ears.

She's still staring up at him, eyes wide, desperate even, and as much as CT has always hated asking for anything, she's asking now, almost pleading.

“Come with me,” she says again. “Please. Wash, you don't see, you don't  get  it, but we have to get  out  of here. He doesn't care about us. He doesn't care about  anything  that's between him and -” She stops abruptly, shaking her head, and turns back to the bed with a frustrated sigh. “Whatever it is he's trying to do here.”

Wash listens impassively, not looking away, and he doesn't speak until she finishes, asking gently.

“And just what is that, Connie?”

“I don't  know! ”

She grabs a bottle off the bedside table and shoves it into her bag, ducking her head, but not quickly enough that he doesn’t catch the angry tears in her eyes, and Wash sighs, stepping forward carefully, the way he’d approach a captured animal, wounded and lost and afraid.

“Connie.”

There’s nothing but silence, and CT fighting to zip the overstuffed bag shut, crumpled, unfolded clothes catching in the zipper and refusing to lie flat as she grows more and more frustrated.

“CT.”

He presses his lips together, and steps around her, taking the bag from her with gentle but unyielding hands. It only takes a few minutes to pull it all out again, to fold the clothes up neat and pack it all up tidily, and the zipper closes easily, hiding it all away.

She stands sullenly beside him as he works, arms crossed over her chest and an angry glare on her face, but when he slides the bag wordlessly across the mattress towards her again, she reaches out to take it with a muttered  thanks , and her fingers brush against his, for just a second.

Wash catches her hand, more clumsily than he’d meant to, but he doesn’t let go, holding on tight and just staring down, at her small fingers wrapped in his. For a moment, he considers trying one more time, the same words all over again –  just trust me, Connie, I can help, you don’t have to run  – but one look up at her face and he knows it won’t do any good.

He sighs, and squeezes her hand.

“I’ll distract 479,” he says, and when she gives him a bewildered look he just keeps talking. “The Pelican pilot, she’ll be in the shuttle bay. I’ll make some excuse, get her to leave, and when the coast’s clear you can get in, grab a ship and go.”

She shakes her head, protesting immediately, just as he’d known she would. “No. It’s too dangerous, they’ll know, you’ll get in trouble –” but he just drops her hand to squeeze both her shoulders, bending down to look into her eyes.

“Hey. We’re a team, remember?” He moves forward before she can object, enveloping her in a hug that’s far too brief. “I’ve got your back.”




Years later, with the hot sun beating down on him and sand in every chink of his armor, with the loud, obnoxious voice of the medic still ringing in his ears, Wash picks up her helmet from the sand and stares down at it gravely, remembering that hug, the way she’d frozen for a second before raising her arms to cling back tightly, the words she’d whispered one last time in his ear.

Come with me. You can still save yourself, Wash.

Maybe she’d been right. Maybe he should have gone with her, gotten out of there before things went bad, before he’d had his mind ripped apart from the inside out and had to watch all of his friends go crazy or die.

Maybe if he’d listened back then, he could have saved himself, and her too.

Wash drops the helmet back onto the sand, and turns away, hardly hearing the words coming out of his mouth.

“Scavenge her for equipment, see what you can find.”