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“Shit shit shit shit shit!”
Grace ran as fast as she could, which in the bulky riot control armor she’d swiped from the lab’s armory wasn’t nearly fast enough. She skidded around the corner of the lab’s walkway, barely out of reach of the rapt snarling and snapping at her heels. Roseway was turning out to be anything but rosy. The crack of Max’s shotgun was almost deafening, but he was pressed back into a corner and his anguished shouts pierced her deeper than any echoing gunfire.
She almost slammed into the terminal as she started frantically booting it up, turning just in time to catch the small rapt still stalking her with a sharp kick to the head. It staggered back, shaking its head, giving her enough time to turn back and slam down the Enter key. There was a hiss, a sudden blaring alarm as the chambers lights shut off except for the emergency backup lights high up on the walls, bathing them all in crimson. a dense mist fell across the room, beginning at the opposite side where she’d installed the gas canisters and sluggishly spreading. The remaining rapts recoiled, shaking their heads and pawing at their eyes, scurrying away from Max who fell to one knee, his gun clattering to the floor. His own bulky armor was smoking from the rapts acid, and the vambrace on his left arm was missing entirely. Blood steadily dripped onto the metal below him.
“Max!” she sprinted over to him, crouching down and hauling him to his feet, wrapping his good arm around his shoulder, “Max are you--”
“We need to get the hell out of here,” he snarled, his voice motulated and pitchy from behind his helmet, “I don’t know what the fuck was in those canisters but I don’t want to be breathing it for long,”
They made their ungainly way past the now sedated rapts and staggered out of the lab, the door hissing shut behind them as they collapsed into the stairwell. Grace wasted no time in stripping Max’s armor off, throwing the corroded metal behind her before the acid could reach his skin. His forearm was a bloody mess. She’d seen the rapt bite down on it, heard Max’s shout of anger and pain, and her own armored hands were shaking as she looked him over for any other injuries,
“Fuck, Max,”
“I’m fine,” he snapped, “now take that ridiculous tin suit off, it’s just as compromised as mine.”
She pulled off her helmet and tossed it aside,
“Ellie can get you patched up,” she said, and she felt a lump rise in her throat as she looked down at Max’s arm. Now that her vision was no longer impeded by the ill fitting helmet, she could plainly see the bloody mess that was the vicar’s arm. Four deep lacerations from where the armor had crumpled and pierced into his skin, and a few punctures from the rapt’s teeth. Her stomach churned looking at it. “w-we can get back to the ship and--”
“I said I’m fine,” he repeated, tone icy. He wasn’t looking at her, “Let’s not waste anymore time going all the way back to the ship. Let’s just get what we came for.”
“Max I’m so sorry,” she stepped forward, “please, just let me,”
But Max got to his feet, kicking his armor aside. His shoulders were tense beneath his now ruined vestments, and his jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle twitched in his cheek. Something about his anger made the tenuous thread of her own composure snap,
“Sit your ass back down!” She said, stomping around and blocking his way back up the stairs, “You’re injured and I don’t need you bleeding all over the research we just risked our necks for,”
“Unnecessarily risked our necks for,” he snarled, glaring up at her, “of all the senseless,” but he froze, his anger melting away into shock, and then something closer to horror, “Captain? Why in the world are you crying?”
“Because I’m fucking furious!” She said, dragging the heels of her hands across her eyes, “and a moment before that I was fucking terrified!”
“I,”
“And you’re hurt, and it’s my fault, and now you’re being so goddamn stubborn you won’t let me fix it.”
Max stared at her as she began shucking off more of her armor, hot tears still dripping off her chin,
“So yes Max, I am crying,” she said, kicking the last of her armor away, shivering in her thin undershirt, “but you’re a fucking Vicar, so you should be used to it.”
Max opened his mouth but she held up a threatening finger, anger blazing through the tears, “No! I don’t want to hear it! Now come with me, we’re bandaging up your goddamn arm.”
Max sat stiffly in the chair in the abandoned commissary, watching as Grace dug through the first aid kit they’d found in the bathroom. The data cartridge, as well as a fat stack of overflowing file folders, were piled on the table between them. He did his best to avoid bleeding on it, as she’d asked. The secret lab was quiet now that the rapts were dead and the outlaws and the guards gone. He didn’t know how she could manage to be so persuasive, and if he was being honest, utterly charming when she’d been crying moments before. Her eyes were still red even now as she lined up a bottle of antiseptic and a roll of sterile gauze with uncharacteristic precision. How could someone whose emotions ran so high and so close to the surface, still remain mostly a mystery to him? He prided himself on his observational prowess, especially when it came to people. He was excellent at getting what he wanted from strangers. Information, passage on a ship, whatever it took to further his own goals. But yet with his captain he was always just a half step behind. It infuriated him.
“This might sting,” she said, soaking a square of gauze with the antiseptic.
“Might?” He said, aware of the acid in his voice, but unaware of how to curb it. She looked up at him, and smiled. Sweet as mock apple pie, all dimples, freckles, and perfectly even teeth.
“Hopefully,” she said, and she dumped the bottle onto his arm.
He cut off his gasp of pain by clenching his jaw so tight his teeth ground together. He glared at her as she wiped the blood and the now foaming antiseptic away,
“Quite the bedside manner,” he said through gritted teeth, but she ignored him, now carefully applying auntie-biotics cream to his wounds. Now that the blood was gone he could see they weren't as bad as he’d thought, and the anesthetic in the salve was already starting to take effect. She carefully encircled his wrist with her bloodstained fingers, lifting his arm up so she could begin winding the gauze around it. He watched her do it, eyes flicking from his own arm, to her face. Her full bottom lip was caught in her teeth as she concentrated. A prickle of heat started at his scalp and crept down his spine, and he barely suppressed a shiver . She was doing a surprisingly neat job of it, and even more surprising was when he heard himself say,
“Thank you, Captain.”
She glanced up at him through the thick fringe of her lashes, “Well it’s the least I could do,” she said, sitting back to look at her work, “considering it was my senselessness that caused it in the first place.” She balled up the spent medical supplies and lobbed it into a nearby trash can. Max’s lips twitched . The room was filled with detritus, yet she still felt the need to clean up after herself. When she looked back at him, he saw the shadow of a wry grin twisting her lips. He had the sudden urge to see if they were as soft as they looked, to shove the damn research aside and lift her onto the table, to trace the long line of her throat with his lips. He looked away.
She was senseless, rash, and bordering on completely ridiculous at times. She was too soft, too easily distracted. She cried at the drop of a hat. She could take down a marauder from a hundred yards and talk her way past just about anything. And she laughed so easily, smiled so warmly, even at him, even when he most certainly didn’t deserve it. She was sent to him to further his quest to decipher The Plan. She was sent to him as a test of his already limited patience. She was his best chance, maybe his only chance, of getting to Cheney.
She was in his head much more often than he wanted.
He couldn’t do anything to compromise this, whatever this was. She his Captain, he her loyal crew member. He was so close, he couldn’t let himself be distracted, couldn’t let anything endanger his chance of getting to Monarch. His chance to finally find and beat that useless worm Cheney into a satisfyingly bloody pulp.
“Vicar?”
She was standing now, looking at him expectantly, her pack slung over her shoulder, the research held out aloft, “Can you take this back to the ship? I’ll go to Roseway, and tell Anton we couldn’t find it, then meet you back there.”
“Of course,” he got to his feet, taking the cartridge and the stack of papers from her. Their fingers brushed as he did so, and she looked up at him, her brown eyes enormous, her dark hair curling against her flushed cheek. He shoved the research under his arm and turned away, marching towards the tunnels they’d slipped in earlier. He could hear her following behind, and he flexed his fingers in front of him, attempting to shake off the memory of her warm fingers encircling his wrist. Law, what he wouldn’t give to be senseless, just for a moment.