#pearlymuses

Does it help, she asks.

Wash frowns.

He doesn’t know.

He’s got this habit of late, of processing verbally, though, something his psychiatrist had recommended -- if he processes it verbally, there’s more of a chance that it’ll stick -- or at least, that’s the idea.

So, his shoulders hunching in a shrug, his voice is soft as he stares into his cocoa; “-- I don’t know. I think-- No one but my family’s called me David since before I enlisted. Wash caught on pretty quick. And we were big on nicknames anyway. Then when uh...they didn’t call me anything, really, just a number, and I don’t... I think it-- I think it’d depend, probably. On how much I...forget...” His throat suddenly feels dry but he can’t bring himself to take a sip of the hot cocoa. “-- Hannah told me there was uh...when I first got back, that there was a time when I thought I was there but that she was there too? Like I’d forgotten coming home and everything that came after, but knowing who she was. Apparently it was twenty minutes of her trying to convince me we were stateside until it started to click. She only ever calls me David and it didn’t help then. I don’t know. I guess... I don’t know, I don’t know why I brought it up.”

He’d been doing better since quitting his job and starting to work with the chickens full-time. Still bad. But better. It helped that he wasn’t walking past the bar on his way home every day. At Marnie’s suggestion, he was out for a walk, heading nowhere in particular, surrounded by nature and sunshine and only occasionally stopping to pick a sweet pea for Jas. It helped, he thought. No people. Just...nature. Calming, in a way.

Scratch the ‘no people’ thing. That was a people. He’d’ve let her be, ignored her presence, and carried on his way, but something occurred to him. He didn’t know her. This was a town comprised of less than thirty people; the farmer’d been the last person to rock up, and that was long enough ago he wasn’t sure when it’d been, so? A new person? Who he hadn’t heard about? The fuck?

He still didn’t greet her, didn’t think it was really any of his business. She looked familiar, somehow. Again, though, not really any of his business. Shane nodded at her. The part of him that’d been trying to work on sociability wanted him to say hi or something. The rest of him justified simply nodding by pointing out that he was already outside in the fresh air.

Corvo was sitting cross-legged on the floor as his daughter stood beside him, braiding his hair. He liked to get here early, something calming about sitting in a space he’d canvassed every square inch of a thousand times, with just the hum of the fluorescent lights and Emily’s little melodies. It wouldn’t be long before people started to trickle in, wouldn’t be long before he settled into ‘time to teach these people self-defence’ mode. All these people whose lives he... Suffice to say that if he fucked up in teaching them how to do this, and if that had repercussions down the line, that was on him. For now, though, it was hair-braiding time.

    There were about twenty minutes before the class, and as per usual, he didn’t know who’d be turning up, particularly tonight, it being a bank holiday and all. People were welcome to dip in and out, the small classes a hodge-podge of people who’d been coming for months and people for whom it was their first time. It didn’t matter. Everyone learned differently anyway.

The door opened, a woman ( who he didn’t recognise ) stepping in. Corvo waved while Emily called out, “-- Hey! Come on in! I’m Emily and this is Corvo. Do you know sign language?”

        Emily.

Wash’s breath caught in his throat as he wiped his palms on his jeans. It was important, he reminded himself. It was important to establish positive associations for physical contact. The more comfortable they both got with physical contact, the more physical contact they could...handle. So this was good. And important. And he needed to not psych himself out right now. And he especially needed to not be mentally reviewing the easiest ways to incapacitate the tiny woman whose company he was in.

He inhaled.

He exhaled.

He glanced sidelong at Joy.

Inhaled and exhaled again.

Why was holding hands so hard?

Still, he had to believe that they could do something so basic as holding hands with someone that wasn’t an immediate relative. He had to. So, he put his hand, palm-up on the couch between the two of them. And he wiggled his fingers, to lighten the mood. Didn’t say anything, though. Didn’t need to.

“-- Oh, the teen magazines for sure,” nodded Wash, continuing to flick through a magazine and skimming the articles about various things that Seventeen deemed it necessary to document. He shot her a sidelong sort of awkward smile, awkward mostly because all his smiles were awkward these days, it was not a reflection on anything whatsoever. Except, y’know, his general inability to people.

Stretching and popping his back with a minor wince, his brow furrowed as he considered it, because it was something to consider, and while her mind was laden with her most recent doctor’s appointment, his was still whirring from his last psych visit. He let the magazine fall open on his chest as he looked across at her. “-- Funerals are a way to move on. Maintaining a subscription is like...clinging to something you don’t... I don’t know.”

He hadn’t been expecting to make a friend at that group. He hadn’t been expecting to learn how to Joy. Learning how to Joy hadn’t helped him learn how to people, though. He still wasn’t great at reading things at times. Now might have been one of them; he had no way of knowing.