legionmissions | PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

Pidge narrows her eyes as Foxface stares straight into them. A bead of sweat trickles down her forehead and for a moment, she felt a jolt of panic that he might see it as a sign of weakness and she'd lose her opportunity.

She blinks first. There were more important things to pay attention to and she inhaled sharply as she saw Wash put his back against the wall. Good. He was far enough away for what she planned to do. Foxface turned away from her, probably to go take care of what he saw was the bigger threat.

Pidge reached into her coat pocket for the grenade, clinching it in her fist as she grabbed the pin in her teeth and yanked it out to follow through with a toss for all she was worth. She only had a second to yank her eyes up to her friend and mouth two words.

Sorry, Wash.

It rebounded off the door button and clattered to the floor below, right under Foxface's feet as the door slammed shut.

Edited 2016-11-14 04:41 (UTC)

Foxface shakes off Wash's shot like it's nothing, and Wash has a few moments to reconsider his strategy. Hopefully Pidge can hit the button without Foxface cottoning on to her strategy. If she catches him in the door, Wash may be able to get up close and personal with his knife without danger of Foxface retaliating. It's all going to depend on these next few seconds.

He spends several of them fighting back rage. He knows that look - it's a cocky dominant predator gambit - and he is not falling for it. He'll just have to rip Foxface's throat out before it even thinks of doubling back for Pidge. He can do that.

He glances over Foxface's shoulder to look at Pidge, to make sure she's ready, when-

He's not a very skilled lip reader, but those two words are impossible to miss. What's even easier to see is the grenade pin that falls from her lips as she mouths those words.

Wait- no-

The door slams shut.

A moment later, a loud explosions rattles the door, reverberations echoing down the hallway and making Wash wince. Seconds after that, the clanging of the chompers starting up again sounds through the doors, followed by the screech and grind of - ostensibly - something getting caught in said chompers.

Then there's nothing. Silence, for the space of a thought-

That had been her strategy the whole time - to get him out of blast range and use her grenade on Foxface.

-and another-

He'd fallen for it. He'd trusted her and he'd fallen for it like a fucking idiot.

-and another-

And now she's-

He shakes his head roughly. No. No. He can't start thinking like that. He has to know for sure. "Pidge, open the door." His voice is strangled and unsteady, and that won't do. Try again. Come on. "Pidge. Open the door." It's louder, more firm, but nothing happens, and he's still not getting anything but silence-

"Pidge!" He crosses the hallway in three strides and raps on the door, as though if he just knocks hard enough she'll let him in. "This isn't funny! C'mon!"

Silence. More. Still. She's not saying anything - he can't hear anything moving - she's just a kid, he's supposed to protect her, he could have handled Foxface and she-

He slams his fist against the door. "Pidge!" He's just about yelling now, as though volume and intensity will make a difference where time hasn't, as though screaming loud enough will change the facts-

She's a kid. She's a kid, with a team relying on her and her whole goddamn future ahead of her, and she put herself in harm's way for him, sacrificed herself for his trainwreck of a life, and he-

He's having trouble pulling himself together. This cannot have happened. It just can not.

"Pidge!"

Pidge had only a few seconds to do a lot of things completely perfectly...

Get out of the way while Foxface barreled down the walkway with all the power of a freight train. Catch the side of a heavily vibrating metal platform. Duck under that platform and cling to the rims to shield her from the grenade.

Hang on for dear life as the explosion deafened her for a second time in not even 10 minutes. Ignore the stinging in her arms and the burning sensation on her exposed fingers. Hope Foxface didn't come back to step on her hands and-

The sounds of metal crushing metal only faintly got through the ringing in her ears, but it wasn't hard to guess what happened, especially without the constant shaking of the crushers.

That was that then. Pidge slowly, achingly, awkwardly pulled herself up again. A lot of swinging and slapping the side of the walkway for purchase before finally hauling herself to whatever could pass for solid ground in this godforsaken place.

She wants to catch her breath for a moment, to just look at the crushers pounding stupid Foxface into scrap but-

Wash.

She's kind of glad the ringing in her ears is still drowning everything out, because she's not up for hearing Wash have what she's sure is a meltdown behind that wall. She bolts, stumbles, runs through the cloud of smoke still billowing from the explosion and smacks the button to open the door.

The door slides open abruptly, startling Wash out of his spiral of self-loathing and grief, and Pidge runs out. She's running - there's smoke, he can't see what happened - the plan must not have worked-

Between one heartbeat and the next, Wash clicks over to survival mode. He grabs Pidge's arm, using her momentum to swing her around behind him, and unsheathes his knife with his other hand, holding it in a defensive position. He's at a severe disadvantage in hand to hand combat with a Robotican and he doesn't care- he'll dismantle Foxface with his own to hands if he has to- as long as it keeps Pidge safe-

He takes a breath, and then another. Nothing happens.

Slowly, he edges towards the door and peeks through the open doorway. The smoke has dissipated enough for him to be able to see Foxface through the gloom, half-smashed on the platform under the final vertical chomper, one red eye flickering through the haze. It's like living through the climax of Terminator. In the next moment, Foxface's mangled form fades, no doubt teleported away by Arcade for some much needed repairs. For now, the threat is gone.

He takes a breath, and then another. He's okay. More importantly, Pidge is okay. Right.

He turns and looks at Pidge, voice as steady and grounded as he can possibly manage. "Don't ever do that again."

Foxface miscounted. After all that, Foxface lost because he miscounted. It's so funny she can't even laugh.

Pidge lets herself be manhandled, swung around, protected. There's nothing to be protected from, but she can't find the words to tell him that. Instead, she takes the moment to gather her thoughts and get herself under control.

Somehow, watching Foxface get teleported makes her feel a lot better. Bye bye, Foxface. Hope that was as painful as it looked.

...But she really hoped that it wasn't as painful for Wash as she'd imagined it was. It was a given that he'd absolutely freaked, no matter how calm and stern he was trying to act right now. She nearly got her head blown off and-

She doesn't even think about it before wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug.

"Sorry I scared you."

Pidge hugs him, and for a moment Wash stops breathing. After all of that, a hug is the last thing he's expecting, but somehow it's exactly what he needs.

The moment passes, and another follows it. Slowly, like an iceberg breaking away from a glacier, Wash starts to crack.

He holds Pidge tightly - not enough to hurt her, but enough to help him feel better. His breathing is short and erratic, and it takes time to sink in: she's alive. She's fine. She survived. He's so, so accustomed to losing people that having someone come out the other side is still a novel experience for which he will forever be grateful.

The moment passes, and another follows it. Slowly, he remembers how to breathe.

Breathing helps - he needs to be in control of himself, not falling apart. Pidge may be alive, but they're both still in Arcade's death arena; as long as that's the case, neither of them are safe. He needs to be on his guard. He needs to be prepared, and he needs to make sure she is too. He can't do any of that if he's falling apart. He takes another breath, lets it out, and drops the hug.

"I wasn't kidding." He sounds a lot more like himself now. "Don't ever do that again." He shakes his head. "Do you give your leader back home heart attacks too, or am I just special?"

Edited 2016-11-14 08:35 (UTC)

Wash isn't hurting her physically, but the way he hugs her back bursts a giant bubble of guilt in her chest. She can tell by the way he's breathing -that is, not breathing- that he's not OK and she tightens her arms around him.

But his breathing also tells her that he's slowly evening himself out. This is helping him, and that's good to know for the future. The future that both of them have if she has anything to say about it.

"Well, there was the giant fireball incident..." She hasn't scared Shiro quite like this yet, but it's still early for Team Voltron. And focusing on that distracts from the guilt that...she probably can't promise not to do it again.

"Somehow, I'm not surprised." He ruffles Pidge's hair, doing his best to kick his brain into gear. They're not out of the metaphorical woods yet, and he can't afford to be in pieces. "We should find a place to hunker down for a while. We both need rest, and you still need to eat." He hasn't forgotten about that wasted MRE lying in a hall somewhere. Pidge was already running on fumes and frustration, and stress and adrenaline would have wrecked any energy reserves she had left.

(He's not thinking about himself, of course. He ate this morning. He's been through worse. He'll be fine.)

Pidge only makes a token effort to pull away from his hand. Hair-ruffling. What a dork.

"Well, let's find one then." Fortunately, they don't have to go far. There's what looks to have been a storage room a few halls down. It was looted long before they got there, but it's big enough and it has a door they can actually lock from the inside.

Pidge's assessment is only "It looks as good as we're going to get here" before she leans against the wall and slides down. It's there that she takes the time to get a good look at Wash. "Are you OK?"

The supply closet, empty though it is, is a godsend. Wash scopes it out thoroughly before he relaxes - the door is hinged and doesn't seem to be automated at all, which means Arcade can't yank it open remotely. Good. (It also means that they're basically trapped if anyone attacks the doorway, but in an area that's nothing but neverending enclosed hallways, that's about the best they're going to get. The extra security is currently worth the risk.)

He makes sure the door is shut tightly and locked before joining Pidge on the floor, pressing his back against the cold metal of the wall. After the day he's had, it feels good. "I'm fine," is all he says as he pulls his pack into his lap and starts rummaging through it. It's not really the truth - he's not going to be fine as long as they're in whatever circle of hell Arcade has created for them - but right now, he's about as close to fine as he can get, and not unlike the room, that will have to be good enough. He pulls out another MRE - his last MRE, not that he's going to tell Pidge that - and takes the time to activate it, handing it to Pidge as it heats up. "Let's try this again."

She takes it and waits for it to finish, but she can't help but notice...

"Do you have one?"

She hopes he hasn't just handed her his only set of rations. He needs something to replace all the energy he just lost, and she knows it's a lot.

Well, dammit.

"Not since Foxface wasted the other one." He shrugs - right now, he's honestly not too worried about it. "I ate this morning, though. It turns out shark is pretty good if you don't completely burn it." He'd definitely made some mistakes; to his credit, he'd never actually had to cook a meal over a campfire before with zero pans or utensils. The shark turned out pretty well, considering - it had been edible, and it had tasted okay. As far as Wash is concerned, that's a success. "I also have a lollipop the size of my head courtesy of Nita, but I'm not that desperate yet." Hopefully he won't ever get that desperate.

The MRE should be done heating by now, and he nods to it. "That should be ready. Eat it before it gets cold."

"Shark...You know what, I'm not even going to ask." Yeah, why not? Why not have some shark for breakfast? That's just the sort of situation they're in. "You know, sugar gets pretty sharp when you suck on it enough. Maybe Nita really gave you another weapon."

Pidge tucks in, and grimaces. "Ugh...I guess I got too used to real food on Legion World."

But she keeps eating. She's hungry and tired and finally acutely aware of both of those things, and she only stops to yawn. This is why she usually doesn't stop: once she does, she can't get started again.

Just because she's not asking doesn't mean it's not worth an explanation. "There's a beach zone here. A shark with mechanical legs was trying to kill me, so Nita and I killed it and ate it. He shrugs, completely blasé about the whole thing. There's a Soviet Russia joke in there somewhere, but he's not invested enough to make it.

He quirks an eyebrow at the sugar comment. "You just want to see me kill someone with a lollipop, don't you." Odds are he probably can, given the right circumstances. "Though if I wanted it sharp, I'd just break it. It's faster."

That's about the right reaction to one's first MRE, and Wash hides a grin. Oh, yeah. He remembers that. "You get used to those, especially when you're having them twice a day for weeks on end." He pauses for a moment, considering what he just said. Oh. "Hopefully it doesn't come to that here." He's not planning on dying here, but he doesn't exactly want to spend the rest of his life here either.

The yawning does not go unnoticed. Wash busies himself with his pack, rearranging items and repacking them to keep his hands busy, and takes the opportunity to look Pidge over. It's hard to tell if she's injured slumped against the wall like she is, but she was moving just fine earlier, and that's about all he has to go on. Right now, it just looks like she's exhausted. "You should get some rest," he says, setting his pack aside for now. "I'll keep watch."

"Of course you did." It's more...accepting than sarcastic. That's just the way things are around here. Sharks with robo legs. Why not.

"If you break it it'll just shatter into shards, you'll lose the distance of the stick." Later, she'll reflect on just how weird it is that she's thinking of this seriously. "You'd practically have to be in someone's lap to get any use out of it."

She wolfs the rest of it as fast as she can, deciding more time spent eating means more time spent tasting. It's awful and the calorie bomb makes her feel like a canonball is sitting in her stomach. Good time to at least attempt to sleep.

Not that she feels up for arguing with him in the first place. "OK," she says, pulling out the sleeping bag Arcade saw fit to provide her and unrolling it. "And here I thought this wouldn't come in handy."

"Pidge, if I don't have a gun on hand I fight with a knife," Wash says flatly. "'Practically in someone's lap' is about the range for that too. I'm not worried." Then again, he wouldn't be fighting with a lollipop anyway if his knife were handy, so it's a bit of a moot point.

He settles in and gets comfortable against the wall, watching Pidge destroy the MRE, and he can't help but smile just a bit. Yeah, that's definitely how most first-timers tackle them. At least she's not trying to fight him on getting rest.

"It's better than what I got." Wash shrugs. "Some smartass sent me a My first murderworld scrapbook this morning." It could always be worse, but that's still pretty damn bad.

"Well, if you stabbed someone with a lollypop you'd be playing right into Arcade's ratings," she says, drifting off even as she zips herself into the bag.

She rolls on her back -this floor is really hard even with a sleeping bag- and folds her arms under her head.

"'First.'" She practically spits the word as she closes her eyes. "Not likely."

"Pidge, the T-1000 that was chasing us earlier is the fourth tribute I've fought in two days." He says it casually, like the fact that he's come up against four incredibly strong people out for his blood is just business as usual. (To an extent, it is, and that should worry him far more than it does.) "I'm already playing into his ratings."

He raises an eyebrow, and- oh, right. Pronoun game. "I think they mean my first. It's blank, like I should be putting stuff in it." As though that will ever happen. "If I hadn't gotten fire starters, I would've used it as kindling already."

"Just don't make it too interesting for him," she says without opening her eyes. The fact that he's still standing right now makes it obvious that he's strong enough to take care of anything Arcade throws at him.

"Mmmm..." she says, and then pops an eye open. "Don't tell me that means you're still carrying it around?"

"Too late." It's accompanied by another shrug. Arcade is obviously out for violence, and Wash has given him that in spades, with contingency plans for any encores that may pop up. It's cynical and paranoid, yes; it's also how he's survived, both in the arena and in war.

"Yep. I'm waiting for an opportunity to use it in a big Screw You kind of way. If that doesn't work out...like I said, kindling." He looks down at her. "Now get some sleep."

Edited 2016-11-20 08:47 (UTC)

PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

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