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Wash woke up to the familiar smell of disinfectant, blood, and his own unwashed skin. A slab of cheap bedfoam wrinkled underneath him when he tried to move. Straight from armor to a hospital bed, it felt like. Gross.
He blinked and squinted, coaxing reluctant eyeballs into focusing. Metal ceiling, close, slightly curved. Definitely a ship. Why was he in a ship’s medbay? Right, because of Temple. Temple had locked Wash and Carolina in his Murder Fridge, because he was a fucking crazy person, and then someone had busted them out. Wash searched his memory and came up with a tall, bulky shape silhouetted in the doorway. Some dazed neuron kept trying to tell him that it had been…Locus? Actual mercenary Locus? Either Locus or Big Bird. Both seemed equally plausible, to be honest. And the person who was either Locus or Big Bird had unlocked his and Carolina’s armor and gotten them out of the Murder Fridge. The rest was a blur. Wash was pretty sure he hadn’t been doing so great by that point - and damn, he still wasn’t. His thoughts wandered, heavy and clotted by sedatives. Every part of him ached and sharp pain ringed his neck where it had pressed hard against his armor for too long. He must have passed out and gotten thrown in a medbay to recover.
He turned his head gently to one side - or at least tried to. His neck had been packed with gel supports and swathed in enough bandage to render it nearly immobile. Didn’t seem to be making it hurt any less, though. Neither were these damn sedatives. Were they sedatives or painkillers? They sure weren’t killing any pain. He managed to press one cheek into the gel and tip his head sideways. His gaze scanned down the curving ship’s bulkhead until it fell on - shit, someone else was in the medbay with him. A man leaned back on a crash-crate pushed up against the wall, apparently asleep with his arms crossed over his chest. He had dark skin and darker hair that fell across his face, a thick nose that had been broken at least once, and a square jaw that gave him a heavy, determined look even while napping. Wash stared. Not a jot of recognition stirred in his exhausted mind. Who the hell could it be? Come to think of it, whose ship was he on? They hadn’t had a ship at Temple’s lair. They’d - had they been looking for one, or…
Wash’s gel collar squished softly as he tried to get a better look at the stranger. The man’s eyes opened and he sat up, immediately alert.
“Agent Washington?” he said.
Wash’s eyes widened. No way. Like…no fucking way. It sounded different without the armor filters, but there was no goddamn way he’d ever forget that voice, and there was no goddamn way that…that Locus was sitting next to his bed, taking a goddamn nap.
“I guess it wasn’t Big Bird,” Wash tried to say. Only a halting gasp emerged from his mouth, and he snapped it shut at once as pain speared through his throat. The muscles there didn’t seem to want to do their job.
The man stood and came to Wash’s bedside, absent-mindedly brushing his hair out of his eyes. The gesture drew Wash’s attention and a faint chill went through him. Twin pale scars intersected over the bridge of his nose, cutting a crude X across his face: the same pattern Locus had worn on his armor back on Chorus. He’d painted his goddamn scars on his goddamn helmet. Christ. Wash didn’t know what that meant about a person, but it could not be good.
“Don’t try to talk,” said the man who, shit, must legitimately be Locus. “Your vocal chords are temporarily immobilized.” He straightened up and looked away, grey eyes sweeping the room. “I know I’ve got a tablet somewhere around here…” he muttered.
Wash tried to sit up and managed to move his body a grand total of half an inch. He couldn’t help but notice in the process that a good portion of his bed and blanket were covered with drying blood. Was it his? He hoped not. He needed his blood inside his body, to do important blood stuff.
Locus loomed over him. “Don’t try to move, either,” he admonished Wash.
Wash tried to figure out a facial expression that meant what the fuck happened.
“Do you remember any of what happened?” asked Locus.
Wash concentrated more fiercely on the what the fuck portion.
“I’ll assume that’s a no,” said Locus.
Wash managed to raise one arm, the one that didn’t have IVs sticking out of it, and rest it on his thigh. He tapped once with his index finger.
“Once for yes, twice for no?” said Locus.
Wash tapped once.
“So…is that a yes or a no?” said Locus.
Wash glared. He swore that, just for a moment, the corner of Locus’ mouth twitched upwards.
“Do you remember me, ah…finding you and Agent Carolina?” asked Locus. Wash tapped once. “Releasing the others?” Wash had to think about that, but…right, Caboose had come back, hadn’t he? He’d hugged Wash. It was hard to forget Caboose’s hugs. He tapped again.
“And after that?” pressed Locus. Wash thought, but finally tapped twice.
Locus didn’t have the most expressive face in the universe, but Wash spotted a flash of trepidation before he said, “We attempted to steal a Pelican to escape. You took a sniper shot through the neck.”
Gel crinkled as Wash’s eyebrows rose in dull surprise. The pain in his throat, piercing even the thick medicinal blanket laid over his senses, made sudden and unwelcome sense. He was hurt - hurt quite badly, if Locus were telling the truth. That seemed bad. Even if he couldn’t manage to feel much about it right now. Definitely his blood out on the blanket, then, and not inside him doing its job. How rude.
“The round pierced your hard-suit. Clean through, in and out,” continued Locus. Hey, at least Locus was the one telling him this news. Locus wouldn’t sugar-coat it. “Missed your spine and implants, fortunately, but it’s made a mess of everything else. You’re stable for now, but you need… But A’rynasea can get you to a hospital in time. It can. I know it.” Locus looked, if possible, even more pensive. “I…had to leave your friends while they were still in danger.”
Wash’s heart plummeted and he tried to figure out how to ask a question of his own. Damn, but it had been a long time since he’d used Morse code. He started tapping, hoping he at least had his vowels correct. From Locus’ expression, he didn’t, but after a few repetitions Wash’s unlikely companion managed to guess, “Carolina?” One tap. “She’s with them.”
Wash sighed and tapped once out of sheer relief. At least there was that. He lifted his hand and managed to point to Locus.
Locus blinked and looked down at the pointing finger. “Yes?” he said, sounding perplexed.
Wash pulled back his hand and managed to touch his own face on the second try. Then he pointed at Locus again.
Locus’ expression stayed confused for another moment, then slid suddenly in a mix of unreadable emotion. One hand twitched at his side as if he were about to copy Wash’s gesture. He swallowed and cleared his throat, looking away. “I… Ah. You’ve. Never seen me out of armor before. Have you.”
Wash tapped out a “no,” trying to arrange his face into an encouraging look. Locus had taken off his armor. After who knew how many months - years? It was years, wasn’t it, of course it would be; of course Locus was that fucked up - after some amount of time spent trying to pretend the man inside the armor didn’t exist, erasing his face and his name in favor of a hollow automaton who could just follow orders, Locus had taken off the suit and let one of the few people he considered a threat see his real face. That was progress, right? Definitely progress. Wash had a vague feeling that that sort of behavior should be rewarded. So with some difficulty he folded his recalcitrant fingers into a thumbs-up.
“I’m…not sure what you…” Locus frowned. “You’re on a lot of painkillers, aren’t you.”
Wash tried to give a more enthusiastic thumbs-up, but his hand refused further commands and sagged open. Locus’ attention turned to the many screens hanging over Wash’s bed. Whatever he saw there made his face go utterly blank once more.
“You should rest,” he told Wash, the hesitation gone from his voice.
Wash tapped twice.
“You will do your friends no good dead, Agent Washington,” said Locus firmly. “You must rest.”
Right now I’m doing them no good alive, either, he wanted to say. But he’d been awake for barely a minute and already fatigue pressed at his mind. They were going to a hospital, which would fix the thing that hurt - really quite a lot right now. Carolina was looking after the guys, and somehow fucking Locus was looking after him. That was too weird. He didn’t have the energy to deal with that concept right now. Much easier just to sleep till things made sense.
Wash closed his eyes and let himself drift away.
* * *
When Washington’s vitals had settled back into deep sleep, Locus ran a hand over his face, rubbing at a spot just above one eyebrow where a headache threatened. He left A’rynasea’s tiny medbay for the cockpit, calling up exterior view on the monitors even though he knew it would show nothing but the nonsense patterns of slipspace.
“Twenty-three minutes until decision point,” A’rynasea reminded him when he entered, in its calmest and most measured tones.
Locus slumped into the rightmost chair. Somewhere in the cockpit one of Captain Grif’s stray volleyballs rolled into a console with a gentle thump.
“What’s his prognosis?” he asked the empty air.
He hadn’t figured out A’rynasea’s true level of intelligence yet, whether it was smart enough to conceal just how smart it was. He wouldn’t blame it if it did. So maybe it was smart enough to hesitate before telling him what it knew would be unwelcome news, or maybe it was just spending a little extra time to verify the answer. Either way it took an extra half-second before the neutral, contralto computer voice replied, “Agent Washington requires surgery in the next eight hours in order to survive.”
Locus bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut. The headache built again in his skull. A’rynasea didn’t have the best handle on human anatomy. Its estimated twenty-hour window for him to reach a hospital had now collapsed, and with it his possible courses of action. Twenty-three minutes to decision point? No. There was no decision left. Only one destination would get Washington to a hospital in time. And if that destination came with consequences, well…it wasn’t anything he hadn’t earned.
He straightened up and took a deep breath, forced something like a smile even though no one was there to see him. He’d seen much worse situations, hadn’t he? And he’d gotten out of those, alive and everything. That was what Grif would say if he were here. Grif would be certain Locus knew what he was doing. He’d handle this, somehow. He’d…he’d just have to wing it.
“Lock in the new course,” Locus told the ship. “We make for Chorus.”