[in the cells....]

[flybywash]

Wash is sitting with his back against the left wall of his cell, legs pulled up, one arm thrown across his knees. He found a small rubber ball in his pocket some time ago -- either River's or Kaylee's, he's not sure, and he doesn't have the first clue how it ended up in his jumpsuit -- and has been methodically chucking it against the opposite wall for the past hour and a half, letting it bounce to the floor and back to his waiting hand.

Tha-dump, smack. Tha-dump, smack.

Hey, it's better than any of the current alternatives.

Comments

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

There's a tentative knock at the office door. After a few moments of silence, the knocker evidently decides that waiting is for fools, and opens the door anyway.
Ace looks decidedly cowed by the surroundings, but determined. She ignores most of the cells - who wants to talk to some stuffy old guy, anyway? - pauses briefly at Bernard's cell, and then sneaks past. She's looking for one cell in particular.
As is the case in most situations, it's in the last place she looks. She stands, silently, for a few minutes, watching Wash repeatedly play catch, and frowns. She's suddenly very, very sorry that she gave Tim her nitro.
"Wash?"

[flybywash]

Tha-dump dump, dump dump-dump-dump....

The ball goes rolling underneath his cot as Wash misses the catch -- not from poor reflexes, but because, at the sound of his name, he's forgotten it entirely. He pushes himself to his feet and is over at the glass in an instant, the lines of his face smoothing out in relief as he sees Ace.

"Ace! Oh, thank God," he says. He presses one palm to the glass and adds, hesitantly, as his eyes drift over her body, "Are you okay?"

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Ace quickly walks to the cell wall, hesitantly spreading her hand on the glass opposite Wash. She's thankful when she's not zapped across the room. One can never tell with magic.
"I'm fine, Wash. Really." For a given value of 'fine', of course, but Ace doesn't mention this. She's here to make sure Wash is alright, not worry him further.
"Are you okay?" she asks, a worried frown marring her face.

[flybywash]

He smiles, wryly. "Hands kinda hurt," he admits. "I don't have those beating-people-up callouses you're supposed to get yet."

The smile fades, and his Adam's apple bobs. "Please tell me he's not still out there. I know they're supposed to be all wonderful and welcoming to everyone that shows up, but you don't understand, this guy -- "

His fingers curl against the glass, pleading. "He's psychotic, Ace."

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

How do you tell a friend that they've lost all the marbles?
"Wash..." She rests her forehead on the glass, really not sure how to go on. But she still holds out hope that she can break this thing, and then Wash can go home, happy.

...

Yeah, 'cause that worked so well last time, right?

"Who, Wash? There wasn't anyone new there last night." Well, not anyone new that Wash had come into contact with, anyway. She should know - she had been the one tracking him.

[flybywash]

"...tāmāde, you mean he's been here before?"

Wash blanches, puts one hand on his forehead. A sick sort of cold's creeping into his stomach. When he speaks again, it's so rapid that it nudges right up against unintelligibility, and he doesn't meet Ace's eyes.

"His name's Adelei Niska, he's from my world, says he's a businessman, we ran a job for him a while back and it fell through, few months after that he...." He shivers, unable to finish the sentence.

"He's out of his gorram mind. First chance he gets, he'll hurt you and maybe even kill you, and anybody else you care about, and he's not even going to bother finding a reason to do it." Wash looks up at her, breathing heavily. "Stay away from him. If you see him, don't say anything. If he tries to talk to you, run. Please. Promise me."

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

"Wash..."
She wants to promise. It'd be so easy. 'Sure Wash. I'll keep an eye out for the bastard, get security on him. Everything'll be fine, won't it?' Easy words. Little white lies, right?
She could never lie to a friend. She gently pounds a fist on the glass, once, and sighs. Finally she looks up, pleading, hoping that he'll be able to understand what she's saying and believe her.
"Wash, he didn't know you. Really. You completely floored the bloke." she remembers how stunned the guy looked, and how ineffectually he had fought back. "I don't think he's the guy you think he is."

[flybywash]

Wash shakes his head. You'd think he was the one trying to make her understand and believe as he insists, "It was him. He remembered me. Said he was going to hurt Zoe.

"Promise me."

His eyes are feverishly bright.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Ace shakes her head, her expression pained. She hates doing this, hates it with a passion usually reserved for whacking Daleks with bats and blowing stuff up.
"Wash, I was standing right there. He didn't say anything about a Zoe. Really." She spreads both hands on the glass, as if by sheer force of will she could get to the other side.

[flybywash]

"I...."

For the first time, Wash falters, uncertain. Then he's shaking his head again and saying with newfound conviction, "It wasn't by name. That's why. But he knew who she was. You have to believe me -- "

And now he's pleading, hands flat against the glass: "I can't go back there. I can't just let him take her, or you, or anybody else...."

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

"Wash..." This isn't working, she isn't fixing it. Damn and blast, where's a Time Lord when you really need one? Or some nitro, she could really go for some nitro right now.
"I was standing right there, Wash. I heard every word he said. He looked up, said your name, was really, really confused, and then you punched the guy. Hard." She winces, knowing she's being horribly blunt, but she really doesn't do subtle all that well.
"Wash... did you have any nightmares before you came to the bar?" she asks, hesitantly. She'd bet money he did. He had looked horrid.

[flybywash]

He stops. "What? That doesn't have anything to do with -- "

And his brow creases.

"....You think it's Nyar-whatever guy," he says softly. Not angry, just resigned (and still a tinge frustrated).

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

"I don't know what this is, Wash!" Ace is frustrated as well. But she at least has the benefit of having gotten some sleep recently, and bites back her rising temper. Now is not the time to throw a hissy fit.
"Wash... all I know is, when I last saw you, you were happy. Then, when you came back, I couldn't get your attention, and you looked like death warmed over. You were a zombie... I couldn't get a word out of you until they tied you down." she tries logic again, with the hopes that she might be getting somewhere.

[flybywash]

Wash regards her for a moment. Then, wordlessly, he unhooks the top three buttons of his Hawaiian shirt and pushes the fabric aside, exposing several faint, but still noticeable, scars on his chest. Each one's about the size and shape of a quarter.

"This is what he did to me the last time I saw him. Three hundred volts every fifteen seconds. Maybe more. No idea how long it lasted -- let's say two hours, at least, and that was his idea of a warm-up.

"It wasn't 'cause I had a nightmare, it was because he's here, and I don't know about you, but when you -- " His voice cracks, and he tries again. "I'm sorry if I scared you or anything like that, but truth was, I was scared. Okay? And then he threatened Zoe...."

That's only going to take them back in circles again, and he knows it. He shakes his head and starts to button his shirt back up. "I'm sorry. But not for punching him. Ain't ever going to be sorry for that."

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Ace looks stricken.
"Oh God... Wash, I'm..." she swallows hard, staring at the scars. "I'm so sorry." Now there's two wankers she wants to introduce personally to the joys of nitro. She also feels like some sort of rotten scumbag, trying to convince Wash that the guy he hit last night wasn't the one that had done that.

[flybywash]

His lips pull into a flash of a small, sad smile. She gets it now.

"Now will you promise?" he asks, voice barely a murmur, as he finishes fastening the last button of his shirt. His hands linger at the collar for a few seconds.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

She leans against the glass again. She feels absolutely rotten, and knows she can't give up, which is the worst of it. Because there's a wife waiting for him at home, where-ever that is, and Wash is doing neither of them good sitting here.
"I..." Bugger it all. She chokes back tears, determined to see this through.
"I can't, Wash. Please..."

[flybywash]

And just for an instant, Wash looks like he's been slapped.

It passes. His expression settles into something blank and resolute, but his eyes are still overbright with tears, bewilderment, fury at this betrayal....

He turns away and walks back to the cot, squatting down to retrieve the rubber ball underneath.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Ace bites her lip so hard to keep from crying, it starts to bleed. She once thought that she was the lucky one, not having caught the insane god's attention. Now she knows that isn't true. This is hell, and there's no waking up.
"Wash?" Her voice is soft, plaintive, begging. She can stand his arguments a lot better than this sudden coldness. "Wash please, listen to me..." She slides down the glass, finally sitting on the floor outside the cell, both hands pressed against the wall.

[flybywash]

He ignores her. When he puts his mind to it, he can take the "passive-aggressive bastard" act to a whole new level. Settling himself more or less how he was when she came in, he goes back to throwing the ball against the far wall.

Tha-dump, smack. Tha-dump, smack.

And if his aim's a little off, well, it's probably just because he's tired.

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Now she does cry. She cries for the man she met in the bar who has a love affair with fresh fruit. For the man who wears obscenely bright Hawaiian shirts just for the fun of it. For the man who could make her laugh even when she was feeling low. She also cries for his wife, who must be wondering, by now, what happened to him.
"I'm... I'm sorry, Wash. I'm so bloody sorry. Please don't do this..." she sobs out, leaning against the glass fully.

[flybywash]

"Maybe you should go."

Tha-dump. Smack. His tone's completely deviod of emotion. "I bet security doesn't like it when people wander around back here unsupervised. You know, with all us violent and unstable people."

[nitro-is-ace.livejournal.com]

Ace curls up against the glass, sobbing her heart out. She was doing no good here, she could see that now. She couldn't even give him the promise he wanted. Eventually she gets enough of a hold on herself to speak again.
"God, I'm sorry, Wash. I am. And I'll be back, I promise." She reaches into her coat, and pulls out a small figure. It's a plastic T-rex, and she carefully sets it on the floor where Wash can see it.
Very reluctantly she stands again, keeping one hand on the glass. She watches him for a minute, choking down the sobs that threaten to reduce her to a sobbing pile of British pyromaniac. Then, slowly, reluctantly, she heads towards the door.

[flybywash]

Wash doesn't speak, or look up, or make any move that might be interpreted as an acknowledgement of Ace's departure.

After a while, though, he does notice the toy dinosaur resting just outside his cell. He pauses in mid-throw, eyeing it.

And suddenly finding it hard to swallow, he moves closer to the glass -- to the T. rex -- and takes up his game of catch once more.

Tha-dump. Smack.