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autisticblueteam(AO3) (Tumblr)
“Hey, boss?” Wow, that felt weird to say after all these years. When was the last time he’d called Carolina that? “Can I ask you a question?”
They were in the locker room, Wash suiting down after a long training session that made even his younger body feel the weight of his real age whilst Carolina suited up to take her turn on the floor. He remembered a few moments like this. With Carolina taking as many training slots as she could, it wasn’t uncommon to meet her in the locker room at turnover. They’d always been… quiet, moments; companionable silence, interrupted only by the occasional question about how a simulation had gone. So he figured this was as good a time as any to give this another try.
He didn’t expect it to work, necessarily. Carolina was a busy woman and a woman of strict routine, something he understood well seeing as they both got that particular quirk from the same place, so there was more than a chance she wouldn’t want to waste any time with her session so close—
“Shoot.”
—or she could say yes. Huh. Okay.
How was he going to ask this again? He didn’t think he’d get this far. Man, he really should have thought this through better. Literally all the time in the universe and he couldn’t even pause a moment to think of how to phrase a question. Man things were not going in his favour here and—
“Washington?” Carolina said, her boot clicking into place. Snapping out of his thought spiral, Wash was met with a quirked eyebrow and amused smirk. “You wanted to ask me a question? Or has a cat caught your tongue?”
He followed her gaze to his old locker photos he’d been inadvertently staring at for the past ten seconds and chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.
“No uh— I just wanted to ask, if you were ever, like— on the run from someone powerful, like an organisation like the UNSC or something, where would you… go? Where would you choose to hide?” he said, cringing harder internally with every word that left his mouth.
Carolina didn’t answer immediately, which didn’t help at all, but her brow furrowed slightly in thought as she snapped her gauntlets into place.
“Is this one of those games? Like that… what is it, five things?” she asked. “Hypothetical situations. That sort of thing.”
“Yes!” Wash said, maybe a little too quickly. Why didn’t he think of that? “Yes, it is.”
“Alright then… well, first of all, where would you go, Washington?” Gesturing vaguely towards him, she took her chest plate from her locker. “You strike me as a rather sensible military man and your record certainly shows you’re resourceful.”
“Uh,” wow, good question, “I think I’d… find one of those simulation bases. Take on the identity of one of their reserves, or something; sort of hide in plain sight, you know?”
It probably wasn’t what he’d have answered then, back before he’d seen the end of the war and the chaos that was the Reds and Blues. He’d have had a more complex answer, something more befitting of that resourceful corporal who’d ended up in the Project because he refused to die or go to jail. But it wasn’t wrong, either. After all, it had worked out for him.
“Interesting.” Quick fingers braided her hair and tucked the tail inside the tie to hold it tight to the back of her head, out of the way. Her chest plate locked into place. Almost ready to hit the floor. “I could see that working, done right.”
“And you?” he said, muffled by material as he finally remembered he needed to continue getting dressed.
Musing for a moment longer, a slight smile formed on Carolina’s face. “I… would like to think that I wouldn’t run. That I’d face the problem head-on. But if I had no choice? You have the right idea. I’d hide right under their noses, where they’d never think to look.”
With that, she pulled on her helmet and moved towards the passage down to the floor.
“Like— where, exactly?” Wash said, leaning past the end of the lockers.
Carolina chuckled quietly. Hitting the button to open the door, she said, “Now that would be telling, rookie.”
She walked away, leaving Wash stood there in his half-stripped kevlar and t-shirt, with a half-answer and ten more questions to boot—and a slight chuckle of his own, under his breath.
Vague or not, she’d answered him. It was a lead. Now he just had to figure out how to get the details without coming across so weird and invasive that she actually did get annoyed.
“Alright,” inhale, exhale, “back to the everwhen we go.”
