There was a sudden blink at her confirmation of the state of things, her curse, and the silence hung for a few seconds after before he just started smiling. Snickering. Laughing. Hearing it come from someone else, hearing it come from her was just too fucking rich, and while he heard women drop as many curses as the rest of them back in Blood Gulch, it was still…just cute from her lips.

So he laughed. And it felt so goddamn good to laugh.

He trailed off a little, his head leaning against hers, resting as he sighed. “Fuck it. Just…fuck it. I’ll deal with it one way or another. I don’t know how yet, but that’s how much best plans hit.”

And it wasn’t like he was complaining about changing subjects; knowing what was happening on the other side helped with his worries, kept him from tearing off in the middle of the night to get Wash back. You know, a repeat of Chorus through and through, just a lot lonelier with a smaller team consisting of just himself.

Fuck, he missed those assholes.

“So he’s not being tortured?” Which, it wasn’t as though Wash had been with the Feds, either, even if he had been told again and again that he was that or killed. There was something comforting in this, but—

“…Curious? So, they could be running all sorts of creepy experiments on them? That kind of ‘curious’?” Because he was sure that was going over fucking great. Shit.

“You guys ever thought of just giving up?” he asked quietly, but he knew the answer. It’d be the same from his group. Too stubborn. Too tough.