[ a wording choice that doesn't go unnoticed. he'll send a few pings, descriptions that are light and brief -- some areas of the city where the damage seems most critical. but also; ]
Then let me know when you can take a breather.
[ he's seen first hand that pietro can't exactly go forever at full speed, after all. its one step removed from a specific instruction to make sure to take a break but -- he also wants to check in with him, specifically. wash knows the pattern all too well, to just distract himself and focus on something else, on helping others, but. that isn't always enough. and wash knows he may not be the right person for that, with him, but he will still try. ]
[Pietro knows his limits there, and he might push them just a bit, until he actually can't run anymore and needs to sit down and rest wherever he happens to be at the time. Right now, 27 minutes after the last text, that's on the cracked front steps of some office building, where he sprawls and makes people walk around him with a wave of his hand while he focuses on breathing before he blacks out. But Wash doesn't need any of those details, and he'll be fine in a couple of minutes.]
[ the eye-roll is a bit much, but very like him, and if nothing else taking the time to type all of that probably means he actually is resting. a pause to consider, as wash taking a small breather too after he's helped to move a lot of rubble -- and well. he'll venture. ]
Good to know.
The damage here isn't great, but it looks like its a lot worse in the Down. Has to have been an earthquake of some kind, but. It reminded me of worse, too.
[He knows what Wash is doing, and Pietro's tempted to ignore it, but he's already mentioned some things about Tony Stark, his death, Wanda... He's seen Wash's scars, his guns and knives, knows enough about him to know he understands that type of situation and the fallout from it years later. They just haven't really talked, without Pietro being dismissive or too guarded over details.]
Novi Grad shook like that. The city where I lived. When there were bombs, and at the end when it was being destroyed completely. A battle with robots. It is where I died.
[ wash was going to make the attempt but was entirely prepared to simply be dismissed or rebuffed, and he would've been fine with that. instead -- more. simple words, but every single one with weight, everything from just the name of the city, the mention of bombs, a battle, and -- his death. wash knows his body far too well already, could trace every single one of those bulletscars from memory. spread out like they took him down in a spray. wash's own scars are varied, criss-crossed everywhere, except for the one. vicious like lightning, spread down from the hard metal embedded at the back of his neck across his shoulders and back.
for some people he'd thank them for trusting him enough to tell them anything like this. with pietro, well. it feels a little like it'd only be rebuffed. but maybe pietro knows, anyway.
instead; ]
Back home, the Great War was against an alien threat. The Covenant. Greatest threat humanity's ever known.
They'd surround planets with ships, bombard the whole world from orbit. Called it glassing, because it causes even the dirt itself to melt into something like volcanic glass.
[There had been one alien attack at home, on the other side of the world in New York City. But he'd known about it, those aliens are where his powers came from, their technology. It could have been the first of many attacks, maybe larger scale later. The picture Wash paints isn't unimaginable to him. A threat that would destroy the entire planet, and seemingly methodical about it, each one just another stop on the way. For it to have a name, like an event, he expects there's a lot of 'glassed' planets out there.]
They still out there doing it?
[That one question holds a lot in it, did they win at some point, did Wash die, is the whole galaxy fucked...]
Ceasefire in 2552 with one of the alien factions. Fighting kept going for a while more, but the Covenant never had enough firepower to pull things on that scale again.
In my time, Earth and her colonies were some 800 strong, spread across the galaxy. When the war ended, that number was closer to 200. Casualty numbers aren't exactly easy to estimate, but. Over half of all humanity, at least, were killed during the war.
[ billions of lives. what wash won't mention is that, even in the face of a literal alien threat, humanity still wasn't great at not fighting with each other. more of his time was spent fighting people than aliens, something he's deeply bitter about. ]
[Over half of all humany killed off, no matter how far they'd spread out from Earth. It's a huge scale war, but the core of it remains like every other one, destruction and determination to win from either side, likely ongoing so long they don't even remember what started it. If he'd known that had happened to some degree in his world too, about Thanos and the Snap, he might have something to conceptualise in comparison, but no one's told him what happened after he died, how bad it all got.]
Shit. Fallout lasts for long time.
[A ceasefire doesn't mean much when there isn't a lot left to preserve. That, at least, he understands. It just becomes survival after devastation and people struggling to do even that.]
Humanity as a whole is recovering, rebuilding. Terraforming tech exists and worlds can be recovered. The thing about being that spread far across the galaxy though is that the further you are from Sol, the less they'd give enough of a shit to send anything your way.
[ the bitterness isn't particularly subtle. wash is from an outer colony, he's never even been to earth. he understands the practicality of prioritizing, the brutal necessity of what is essentially galaxy-wide triage. he'll even defend the decision-making, in certain conversations. doesn't mean he has to like it, though. ]
[ he means that very, very literally. and whether or not it's good or bad? it's both. painfully, deeply both, especially for wash.
he could stop there. but after some consideration -- a venture to actually ask. ]
Your super-speed, thing. Could I ask where that comes from?
[ it doesn't really matter, and wash would take no for an answer -- he's seen many people with powers now that he doesn't need to pry into. but he is curious. war. his city being targeted and bombed. was this something he could simply always do? or was it something he was bent into, molded into, for some ambitious men with too much power and money to see if he could be pointed in a direction they wanted, no matter how much it might break whoever's involved? because that was wash. that was his team. a product and then victim of war, through and through. ]
[Pietro doesn't tend to keep the origins of his powers a secret, the idea of someone naturally possessing them wasn't something he'd thought about until he'd met Ororo and learned about her version of himself in her world, where people were born with powers. He'd told several people about the experiments, including her and Eloise, and Wash's question gets a reply without any hesitation. For Pietro, it had been choice born from desperation, to let ambitious men use him for their purposes, with no compensation but promises of getting what he needed to save his country from destruction. He'd been half responsible for said destruction in the end, though...]
I did not always have it. It was experiment with alien technology. They found us at a protest, said they could help us. I volunteered to be exposed to it, Wanda too. Did not know what would happen, only it would change us. They were looking to make supersoldiers or something like that. Out of all volunteers, we were only survivors. Everyone who went before us died.
[ wash tends to be careful about asking people things, whether or not they're secret: information is everything, and things even carelessly shared with him will never go away. ]
Volunteered, huh. I guess I was kind of the same. Feels like the only thing as universal than war are all the vultures that circle to exploit it.
[ there's always experiments, always supersoldiers, incalculable risks and prices to pay that seem to mean nothing to people with enough power. wash had been blackmailed, more or less, but. he thinks he would've signed up for it anyway, no matter what. ]
It is exactly like that. No matter what century, no?
[2552 is a long way ahead of him, and Pietro isn't the least bit surprised there's still massive scale war and profiteering from it, whether it be money or power.]
[ it would be nice if they could escape from such a fate. but in everything wash has ever seen? inevitable. always. all they can do is try to live within it. try to be more than what war made them. ]
Did that little alien tech experiment have anything to do with why your Novi Grad was targeted?
Yes. We were usually in the middle of war, but overlooked, you know? They would say Sokovia is nowhere important, but in the way of everywhere that is. Collateral damage. This time, facility with experiments was targeted. After, it became base for the robot who wanted to destroy all life to start over. Big mess.
[ yikes. that strikes a few chords. wiping out life to start over seems to be a theme. ]
Yeah. Place where I grew up was usually overlooked, too. Until it wasn't.
[ until the unsc ran military training, operations, recruitment and more out of their back yard. again, a pause, and -- he isn't sure if he should venture, tends to be careful about prying with anyone he even remotely gives a shit about, and he does care about him. but. ]
Wasn't just when you died, was it. [ its not a question. bombs, and then later in the end. the way pietro had trembled in front of him, the way he'd seen everything being destroyed, the way he was afraid of all of it crumbling again -- that last one killed him. but he'd survived the bombs before, maybe even multiple times over. him and his sister, him and wanda. ] You've found something here. I'm glad you have that.
[If it wasn't bombs, it was gunfire and tanks in the streets. It hadn't seemed anything strange, anything wrong, because it's what he'd known. Until he'd been old enough to understand the way his mother would look out the window when the rapport of gunfire was too close, or why his father stayed up so late sometimes, chair positioned by the door to the apartment, expecting a raid that day based on rumours or someone else's over-vigilance. He'd barely gotten that grasp on it all before it became so real in an instant.]
It should not have bothered me like it did. The shaking, the noise.
[But he'd been away from it long enough that he'd started to feel safer, had enough peace, something else to think about. And part of him forgot.]
[ wash is lucky, in that way: he didn't grow up in war. life was rough, but the war was far away and unreal, talked about in broadcasts and, rumors, calls for recruitment. his first taste of what the war really meant came -- later. ]
I don't know if it should not have bothered you. Doesn't matter how long it's been or how used to it you get. Sometimes something happens, and its like you never left.
Having something to lose can bring that into focus. For better, for worse.
[ wash hasn't seen it with his own eyes that much, but -- he gets the sense of it, even though they've had scarce few conversations outside of the context of sex. for all his arrogance, pietro's not selfish. he does genuinely help people, and clearly, letting him focus on that would be beneficial for everyone involved. ]
Back to work.
[ good talk, buddy. back to doing what they both can. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Then let me know when you can take a breather.
[ he's seen first hand that pietro can't exactly go forever at full speed, after all. its one step removed from a specific instruction to make sure to take a break but -- he also wants to check in with him, specifically. wash knows the pattern all too well, to just distract himself and focus on something else, on helping others, but. that isn't always enough. and wash knows he may not be the right person for that, with him, but he will still try. ]
no subject
I am breathing.
🙄
no subject
Good to know.
The damage here isn't great, but it looks like its a lot worse in the Down. Has to have been an earthquake of some kind, but. It reminded me of worse, too.
no subject
Novi Grad shook like that. The city where I lived.
When there were bombs, and at the end when it was being destroyed completely.
A battle with robots.
It is where I died.
no subject
for some people he'd thank them for trusting him enough to tell them anything like this. with pietro, well. it feels a little like it'd only be rebuffed. but maybe pietro knows, anyway.
instead; ]
Back home, the Great War was against an alien threat. The Covenant. Greatest threat humanity's ever known.
They'd surround planets with ships, bombard the whole world from orbit. Called it glassing, because it causes even the dirt itself to melt into something like volcanic glass.
Happened to my home.
no subject
They still out there doing it?
[That one question holds a lot in it, did they win at some point, did Wash die, is the whole galaxy fucked...]
no subject
In my time, Earth and her colonies were some 800 strong, spread across the galaxy. When the war ended, that number was closer to 200. Casualty numbers aren't exactly easy to estimate, but. Over half of all humanity, at least, were killed during the war.
[ billions of lives. what wash won't mention is that, even in the face of a literal alien threat, humanity still wasn't great at not fighting with each other. more of his time was spent fighting people than aliens, something he's deeply bitter about. ]
no subject
Shit.
Fallout lasts for long time.
[A ceasefire doesn't mean much when there isn't a lot left to preserve. That, at least, he understands. It just becomes survival after devastation and people struggling to do even that.]
no subject
Humanity as a whole is recovering, rebuilding. Terraforming tech exists and worlds can be recovered. The thing about being that spread far across the galaxy though is that the further you are from Sol, the less they'd give enough of a shit to send anything your way.
[ the bitterness isn't particularly subtle. wash is from an outer colony, he's never even been to earth. he understands the practicality of prioritizing, the brutal necessity of what is essentially galaxy-wide triage. he'll even defend the decision-making, in certain conversations. doesn't mean he has to like it, though. ]
no subject
Someone has to be last on the priority list.
[He gets that too.]
Does not mean you are expendable.
no subject
That's how it had to be.
I was part of a small team, during the war. Spec ops. They're basically all dead.
[ they though, not we. wash was put through some of the worst of his program had to offer, and somehow made it through. ]
no subject
[He leaves that open whether it's a good or bad thing, for him personally it depends on the situation.]
no subject
[ he means that very, very literally. and whether or not it's good or bad? it's both. painfully, deeply both, especially for wash.
he could stop there. but after some consideration -- a venture to actually ask. ]
Your super-speed, thing. Could I ask where that comes from?
[ it doesn't really matter, and wash would take no for an answer -- he's seen many people with powers now that he doesn't need to pry into. but he is curious. war. his city being targeted and bombed. was this something he could simply always do? or was it something he was bent into, molded into, for some ambitious men with too much power and money to see if he could be pointed in a direction they wanted, no matter how much it might break whoever's involved? because that was wash. that was his team. a product and then victim of war, through and through. ]
no subject
I did not always have it.
It was experiment with alien technology.
They found us at a protest, said they could help us.
I volunteered to be exposed to it, Wanda too.
Did not know what would happen, only it would change us.
They were looking to make supersoldiers or something like that.
Out of all volunteers, we were only survivors.
Everyone who went before us died.
no subject
Volunteered, huh. I guess I was kind of the same. Feels like the only thing as universal than war are all the vultures that circle to exploit it.
[ there's always experiments, always supersoldiers, incalculable risks and prices to pay that seem to mean nothing to people with enough power. wash had been blackmailed, more or less, but. he thinks he would've signed up for it anyway, no matter what. ]
no subject
No matter what century, no?
[2552 is a long way ahead of him, and Pietro isn't the least bit surprised there's still massive scale war and profiteering from it, whether it be money or power.]
Inevitable.
no subject
[ it would be nice if they could escape from such a fate. but in everything wash has ever seen? inevitable. always. all they can do is try to live within it. try to be more than what war made them. ]
Did that little alien tech experiment have anything to do with why your Novi Grad was targeted?
no subject
We were usually in the middle of war, but overlooked, you know?
They would say Sokovia is nowhere important, but in the way of everywhere that is.
Collateral damage.
This time, facility with experiments was targeted.
After, it became base for the robot who wanted to destroy all life to start over.
Big mess.
no subject
Yeah. Place where I grew up was usually overlooked, too. Until it wasn't.
[ until the unsc ran military training, operations, recruitment and more out of their back yard. again, a pause, and -- he isn't sure if he should venture, tends to be careful about prying with anyone he even remotely gives a shit about, and he does care about him. but. ]
Wasn't just when you died, was it. [ its not a question. bombs, and then later in the end. the way pietro had trembled in front of him, the way he'd seen everything being destroyed, the way he was afraid of all of it crumbling again -- that last one killed him. but he'd survived the bombs before, maybe even multiple times over. him and his sister, him and wanda. ] You've found something here. I'm glad you have that.
no subject
[If it wasn't bombs, it was gunfire and tanks in the streets. It hadn't seemed anything strange, anything wrong, because it's what he'd known. Until he'd been old enough to understand the way his mother would look out the window when the rapport of gunfire was too close, or why his father stayed up so late sometimes, chair positioned by the door to the apartment, expecting a raid that day based on rumours or someone else's over-vigilance. He'd barely gotten that grasp on it all before it became so real in an instant.]
It should not have bothered me like it did.
The shaking, the noise.
[But he'd been away from it long enough that he'd started to feel safer, had enough peace, something else to think about. And part of him forgot.]
I have, and I want to keep it.
no subject
I don't know if it should not have bothered you. Doesn't matter how long it's been or how used to it you get. Sometimes something happens, and its like you never left.
Having something to lose can bring that into focus. For better, for worse.
no subject
I think it makes all the difference.
[Having something to lose again.]
Break is over, yes?
I will text you later.
no subject
Back to work.
[ good talk, buddy. back to doing what they both can. ]