Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
As Ronin carried the tray of food toward the cloth partition serving as Lara’s room in the infirmary, his processors whirred. He should’ve been concerned about the early morning meeting he’d just had with Jack Rodriguez.
The colonel was furious after meeting with Lara yesterday.
He’d said that he had half a mind to kick them both out.
Ronin didn’t believe the threat; if Rodriguez was serious about the base’s security, there was no way he’d let two strangers who knew both its location and so much of its layout just walk away.
And there’d been something in his eyes today, something in the tone of his voice, that suggested he’d been shaken.
Lara’s words might’ve done more than anger him. They might’ve made him think.
Ronin had smoothed over the situation as best he could, urging the colonel to consider her perspective and give her some more time. Rodriguez had reluctantly agreed. The situation was far from ideal, and remained volatile, but it wasn’t what dominated Ronin’s thoughts now.
No, he was preoccupied with the fact that since Lara had awoken from her laudanum-induced sleep several hours ago, she hadn’t said a word to him.
He brushed aside the curtain and entered the small space. Lara lay on the bed, right arm outside the blanket and resting at her side, left tucked snugly in its sling, with her head turned away. Was she sleeping?
Stepping closer to the bed, Ronin set the tray on the nearby cart and looked down at her.
Lara’s eyes were open, and she was staring at the side curtain. She didn’t look his way, didn’t acknowledge his presence, didn’t speak.
“I brought you something to eat.”
Silence.
Brow plates drawing low, he covered her hand with his. “Lara?”
She immediately yanked her hand out from beneath his and rested it on her stomach.
An unpleasant sensation skittered through his circuitry, the same one he’d felt when she’d withdrawn from him yesterday. He lifted his hand, fingers curling into a fist, and struggled to understand what he was feeling.
There was hurt, yes, not just from what she’d done but from the knowledge that he’d caused this. It was made worse because all the pieces were here before him, but he couldn’t quite see how they fit together. Couldn’t quite trace the causes and effects that had led to this.
“Lara?”
Silence.
Ronin moved to the other side of the bed, but Lara simply turned her face away from him again.
“Lara, please.” He grasped her chin and gently turned her head toward him. “Speak to me.”
Finally, her blue eyes, bright against the bruises around them, met his. She whipped her chin from his grasp. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
He struggled to isolate his pain, to purge it from his system. This was about what she felt. That was what he needed to know, needed to understand. “Why?”
“Because you hurt me, Ronin.”
Ronin recoiled at those words, pulling back his hand. Electricity buzzed through him, distorting his sensory inputs and his processes, jolting his entire system. All he wanted was to protect her. Causing her harm, even inadvertently, felt like it clashed with every line of code in his programming.
“The laudanum,” he said, his vocal modulator crackling softly.
Moisture gathered in her eyes, and she pressed her lips together, once more turning her face away from him.
He knew he was right, but only partially.
There was more to this, more he couldn’t see, couldn’t comprehend.
Lara’s anger was usually open and fiery.
She didn’t hide it, didn’t shy away from expressing it.
She’d never been afraid to speak her mind to him, even in anger.
But this anger was…different. It was laced with hurt, hurt that he’d caused.
When he caught her chin this time, he didn’t let her pull away, forcing her to keep her eyes locked with his. “Speak to me, Lara. Yell at me. Scream at me, curse at me, hit me. Anything but…this.”
Ronin stroked her jaw with his thumb as he watched a tear spill from the corner of her eye and slide into her hair. “Do not close yourself off to me.”
“You took my choice away,” she said, voice raw.
Every part within him stilled. “Lara…”
“What you did… It was a betrayal. I know you did it because you wanted to help me, but it was my choice, Ronin. Mine.” More tears fell from her eyes.
“And you took it from me. You held me down while they forced a drug into my mouth that you knew I didn’t want.
They treated me like I was crazy, and you… I…I never thought you’d…”
Her face crumpled, and her next words came out between her sobs. “You’re supposed to be on my side, supporting me.”
That unsettling feeling permeated Ronin now, a thousand times stronger than before.
For all his thoughts of her, he’d failed to consider what she wanted, what was most important to her. Instead, he’d decided what was best for her. That single thoughtless act had broken something precious to him—Lara’s trust.
“Lara, I…”
He felt as though both an immense weight was pressing down on him and dark waters were rising around him, felt as low and battered as the scrap littering the dust.
He’d vowed to protect Lara, and he’d thought he had. But he realized now that it was more than safeguarding her body. So many of the wounds she’d suffered in her life had been dealt to her mind, to her heart, and had left scars that would never show on the surface.
Perhaps helping administer the drug to her yesterday had protected her body from physical harm, but he’d inflicted harm of a different sort by doing so. She’d said no, and he’d ignored it.
Ronin dropped heavily onto his knees. That weight continued to bear down, threatening to crush him. But he could not take his eyes off Lara.
What have I done?
Taking her hand, he drew it close and pressed his lips to her palm.
Hadn’t he just recently learned what had been done to him?
Whatever life he’d led before the Blackout, before the war, had been taken from him without his say.
His body had been altered, his memories erased.
His choice had been taken away from him, and he would never know what had been lost in the process.
With that revelation so fresh, how could he have robbed Lara of any choice, no matter how small? How could he not have seen the parallels?
The ability to decide for herself was one of the few things Lara had left, and he’d taken it. He, the one she trusted most. The one she loved.
A tremor coursed through him, carried on a wave of that sparking, unpleasant sensation, that quivering in his coding. That…wrongness.
He pressed her hand to his cheek, holding it tight. “With every core in my processors, every millimeter of my wiring, and every bit of metal and plastic in my casing, I am sorry, Lara.”
She was quiet as she looked at him, her tears falling as her lower lip trembled.
When she gave her hand a tug, he was reluctant to release her, needing that contact, needing her, but he let her go.
Except she didn’t pull away from him. Her fingers lovingly caressed his cheek before feathering through his hair.
“I’m human. I’m not always going to make the best choices, I understand that. But if you disagree, Ronin, talk to me. Guide me to a better choice, but please…don’t take it away.”
“Never,” he vowed vehemently. “Never again.”