4. September 9, 2022 #2
“No, fireball,” he soothed while continuing to deliver the blows.
“It wasn’t acceptable. But it wasn’t acceptable to make her an unknowing pawn either.
And while it may not be your fault—because obviously, you didn’t make the choice to kidnap, rape, and kill her in front of her brother—did you ever stop to think about the harm she could come to based on the choices you made?
“How could we possibly have been fully prepared to fight this kind of evil when we didn’t know what we were facing?
We did not know who we were dealing with when we intercepted that shipment, did we?
Would the outcome have been any different had we known?
Maybe not,” he admitted. “Maybe they still would have taken Sarah. But maybe Waters would have tempered his response and not gone after her on his own. Maybe, with more information, we could have rescued them both, damaged but alive. Maybe we would have been able to strike harder and damage her captors, even decimate them, rather than just go in, rescue Waters, and get out. It’s a lot of maybes, but we might have been able to do some of those things. Now we’ll never know.”
“You think losing Sarah didn’t hurt me? You think I didn’t feel that pain just as much as every one of you did?”
“I’m not saying you didn’t. But I am saying you had knowledge that you didn’t share.”
“There was no way I could confirm?—”
He held up a hand to her. “Stop, Cherry! Just stop! Don’t give me the legalese response.
You’re not a lawyer here, worrying about trapping a client behind a definitive answer.
You’re not a doctor being held accountable for a result you promised and then couldn’t fulfill.
” He swallowed the pain that was too close for comfort.
“You had information that, circumstantial or not, might have made a difference, and you withheld it. End of story. Now that Waters and the rest of us know, you can’t expect us to be comfortable with that.
It is going to make it very difficult for us to trust that you’re not continuing to hold out on information. ”
Her mouth opened and closed several times, no sound coming out, as her brain tried to wrap around his words.
He knew she was going to have a tough time coming to grips with his truths.
Her choices would not make the team, especially him, love her any less.
But they certainly changed the dynamic, and it was going to be painful for her to reconcile that while she thought she’d been doing the right thing, it was possible she’d done the wrong thing.
“You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets bottled up. I’m guessing there are more to come.”
“If I’m keeping anything else secret, it’s because you don’t need to know.”
“Not willing to learn from the mistake? You’re willing to hide behind this armor, crossing your fingers that someone else doesn’t get killed?
We got lucky today that Nemo saved Haskell.
You’re gonna keep rolling those same dice?
Feck, you’ve got bigger balls than I do then because even I know not to take that bet.
Eventually, that luck is going to go cold, and it won’t just be the person who dies who pays the price.
Waters is still grieving, and it was three years ago we lost Sarah.
Kubrick is the only thing keeping him from descending completely into the darkness.
TB is paranoid as shit someone’s gonna come back after Flame because we know her kidnapping has a much bigger role than just Gendry’s obsession with her, and don’t think he won’t hold a grudge against anyone who plays any part in hurting her, including you.
Even dipshit Nemo. You think he won’t burn the world to the ground for that pixie out there he’s been mooning over since before Tribe? ”
He framed her face in his hands. “Who will be the victims next time? Haskell dodged a bullet today, but who’s saying she won’t be a victim again?
Or maybe it will be someone Midas or Steel comes to care about?
Even if it is you—Jaysus, Cherry. None of us could take that, especially me.
I wouldn’t just burn the world down. I’d implode the universe over that and take all life as we know it with me. ”
“Then I guess you’d be no better than me, huh? Are you gonna ask every human being on this planet, every case of sentient life in the universe, if they mind being destroyed because you’ve got a hard-on for something you can’t have?”
He knew she was pushing back at him like a wounded animal.
Anything to escape the agonizing pain of his truth.
“No, fireball. I wouldn’t ask them,” he admitted.
“But that’s the difference between you and me.
You feel sorrow. Regret. Remorse. Me?” He shook his head.
“There’s not one thing in the last six years that I’ve cared about other than you.
So if someone takes you away from me, then no price is too great to make them pay.
I would welcome an eternity in hell for my actions.
The rest of the world can just go feck themselves. ”
They stood there for the longest time, saying nothing.
He, a pillar of calm determination in his confession.
She, a tempest of pain and panic working behind her eyes.
“Well, I’m part of that world, too, Demon,” she whispered.
“You say you feel no sorrow, no regret, and no remorse? Fuck that noise! You’re the worst of us all because you lie to us and yourself about how you ‘handle’ yourself.
Your fight with your crippling addiction puts all of us at risk every day.
When you give up the drugs? Then argue with me about how I handle things.
Until then, you have no right to say ‘Boo’ to me. About anything.”
With a sudden burst of energy, she circled him and headed for the door.
He didn’t move. His brain was screaming at him to go after her.
Promise to trust her, help her. Promise her everything she wanted and more.
Instead, his legs remained locked, his feet stayed rooted to the floor, and he listened as she punched his code into the door lock, opened the door, and closed it behind her.
Moments later, he heard the soft beeps as she punched in the code to her apartment down the hall, then the computerized click of the unlocking mechanism, then the snick of the closing door behind her.
“Feck!”
In the apartment's silence, he crossed through the living room and into his bathroom.
Jerking the right-hand drawer open, he reached for the unmarked pill container, opened it, and shook out two pills.
He threw the container back in the drawer, and as he was about to toss the pills into his mouth, he stopped.
He stared at the two white tablets, his teeth grinding as he considered them.
She was correct. He had no right to call her on her behaviors when he had no control over his own. He was a hypocrite.
“Feck,” he whispered.
With a toss of his hand, the pills shot into his mouth, and he chased them with a glass of water. Then he cursed himself for being twelve kinds of idiot.