One Way Ticket
Rated: PG
Category: Gen, Wash Focus, Pre-Series.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Wanderlust Can Get Folks In Trouble, But It Can Also Light Their Way.
Note: Written for ff_friday's prompt of 'travel'. Also, this fic is pure speculation about Wash's past and thus is obviously non-canon and all that.
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Hoban 'Wash' Washburne's parents had never been able to afford family vacations, but their son was filled with wanderlust from a young age.
He planned imaginary voyages to lands both near and far with every spare minute in school, and his marks proved his tendency to daydream.
As he aged, his plans became more specific and realistic, but no less concrete.
It was always 'someday this' and 'one day that' with Wash. His friends poked fun at his big talk and reality always intruded its ugly head into Wash's journeys in the form of finances.
He'd tried to catch a shuttle off world once at fifteen, but that was the month his father was fired, and his hard-earned cash had put food on the table.
He'd attempted to run away more than a few times, but duty always brought him home.
And so it went. For years, Wash traveled the only way he knew how-in his mind.
But one day things changed, as they always do. Suddenly and tragically, Wash found himself alone in the world. His family and his home were gone. Burned to the ground.
He'd planned his first trip for years, and with nothing to tie him to his birthplace anymore, Wash took off. He knew exactly where he'd go. He didn't know what he'd find there, and he most certainly left with a heavier heart than he'd ever imagined, but since there was nothing left for him at home anymore, he figured now was as good a time as any to start over in a new place.
So he visited Terema, the most unspoiled spot on his homeworld.
It was said that in Terema, you could still see the sky, which Wash could hardly believe. He'd never seen anything above him but the grey haze of industrial pollution.
But like many things in Wash's short life, Terema disappointed him.
As he stepped off the train at his destination, Wash couldn't wait to see the clouds he'd only heard about. His eyes immediately scanned the horizon of Terema as his face wore a perfect mask of excited anticipation. But it soon fell into despondence, and Wash's eyes found the ground and stayed there. The sky here was clearer, yes, but not clear. The sun was still a blurred out lighter spot in a haze of only slightly less grey sky than Wash was accustomed to. Terema looked like every other spot on his planet that Wash had seen.
Wash spent the rest of his day in a bar spending precious credits drinking things with names he couldn't even pronounce and lamenting his plight to anyone who would listen, which was pretty much no one.
He finally left the bar in the wee hours of the night, more miserable than ever.
Terema, the crown jewel of his planet, was nothing but another rotting city.
Wash sniffled to himself as he stumbled through the streets, looking at his own feet. He was as low as could be, but as he walked, somehow, miraculously, the call of a night bird suddenly made him look up.
And that's when he realized that he needed to amend his description of Terema.
Terema was nothing but another rotting city… by day.
But at night, amazingly, the sky was more transparent. It was not the crystal dome of other worlds that Wash had read about, but he could see something he'd never appreciated before.
Stars.
Four of them, clustered together and weakly pouring their light through the murk of the atmosphere like candles struggling to pierce the darkest of nights.
Wash smiled the dopiest grin he'd ever managed in his life, and it was a long time before his feet managed to move again.
When they did, he found the cheapest hotel in town and checked in.
But he only stayed there one night.
The next morning, he found a job as a warehouse worker that provided board in a musty back room. It was a deplorable place to live, and the actual wages for the work were next to nothing, which was the reason the job was open, but Wash didn't care. At night, he'd climb to the roof of the warehouse and stare at the four stars of Terema for hours. Sometimes he slept on that roof, but he always dreamed there.
Eight months later, he'd saved enough to buy his ticket to those stars.
He enrolled in flight school.
And the rest, as they say, is history.