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Young wakes up feeling like absolute shit.
His head pounds, his limbs ache and burn, and every breath is accompanied by a stabbing pain. He blinks his eyes open, and winces at the light, struggling to place himself through his blurry vision. There's a vibration underneath him — an engine, his overtaxed brain supplies after a moment. He's in a running car.
He forces a breath, then another, past the pain, past the disorientation. He remembers—
Shit. The attack. They'd stopped for the night in the woods, found shelter in a cave, but they'd been found in the middle of the night, during Rush's watch. Young remembers being woken up by a shout — the unsettling, ambling forms of the zombies closing in on them, starkly pale in the moonlight — their unnatural strength as they grabbed him, even as he defended himself, shooting a few in the head with whatever ammunition he had left — and then one of them slamming him against the rock wall of the cave, and then nothing.
His vision clears. He is in a car, in the passenger seat. The same car they've been using this entire time, actually, battered and ancient, with the little Destiny sign hanging from the rearview mirror. Rush is driving, his eyes on the narrow country road ahead of them. The sun is low in the sky — almost evening. How long has he been out?
It's not his priority. There were at least a dozen of zombies last night, and even if he and Rush had seemingly managed to get away, they'd had time to do him some damage. There's the telltale burn of cuts on his arms, on his shoulders, and dread spikes in his gut. If one of them managed to get their teeth on him—
"You weren't bitten, if that's your concern," Rush says, accented and casual and not even glancing at him.
Young lets out a long breath, and shifts in his seat. It's almost impossible to get comfortable — he's probably got a couple of cracked ribs, he estimates — but he does his best. "I'm assuming you'd have ditched me by now otherwise," he says.
Rush smiles, a quick flash of teeth, sardonic and amused. "For the greater good, of course."
Young resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Of course."
Truth is, he can't help but wonder why Rush didn't ditch him, now that he's injured and therefore, to some degree, a liability. After all, Rush isn't sentimental — a genius, an asshole, and humanity's last hope, yes, but not particularly sentimental. More like ruthlessly pragmatic, in fact. Young assumes he did the maths and decided Young could still be of use in some way.
He was right, by the way. If Rush wants to get across the country to the lab where he hopes to use his immunity to come up with a vaccine, Young is his best hope of surviving long enough to do so. That is why they've been stuck together for close to two weeks now, driving across deserted narrow backroads, away from the bloodbaths the cities have become. It's been rough — and not only because of the flesh eating, twisted remains of human beings standing in the way — but they're almost there, just a few days out from their target. Once they get there, it'll be up to Rush and whatever scientists they find holing up in the lab to figure this thing out.
Young watches Rush, who's focused on the road. He looks exhausted, drawn and pale and bruised, his shirt torn and stained — though Young probably isn't much better off. His bite scar gleams faintly at the junction between his neck and shoulder, and Young has to resist the urge to wince.
Young's seen him hold his own in attacks, and knows the man isn't to be underestimated; hell, he's probably the only reason Young got out of the last attack alive. But there's a part of Young that can't shake the dissonance; the scientist looks like he belongs in front of a chalkboard, not in the middle of the apocalypse fighting goddamn zombies.
"What?" Rush snaps, and whoops, Young must have been staring.
"Why didn't you leave me there?" he asks, accidentally honest, but also genuinely curious. There's no lost love between them, after all.
Rush says nothing. Swerves to avoid a hole in the road.
"Seriously," Young continues. "We're almost there. You probably think you could survive on your own until there. You'd be wrong, of course, but you probably think that."
The corner of Rush's mouth twitches. "Of course I could," he mutters. "As I've said multiple times before, I don't need you."
Young snorts, oddly cheered by the scientist's brashness. "Yeah, it's not like I saved your life multiple times these past two weeks. You're welcome, by the way."
"I believe," Rush says delicately, "that I was doing the saving not too long ago."
"Yeah," Young says, sobering up. "Thank you."
Rush glances at him, like he's not sure Young means it — but he does. Saving Rush is potentially a favor to all of humanity; but saving Young was not necessary. Hell, it was a risk.
"You're welcome," Rush says quietly. Young can't help but notice he didn't answer the question, but doesn't push.
They drive in silence for a little while, as evening purples into dusk. They'll have to stop soon, can't risk driving into a ditch and wrecking the car in the darkness, and the headlights have long since been smashed to nothing.
"Can I ask you something?" Young asks eventually, quiet under the rumble of the engine.
"Can I stop you?" Rush says with a grandly exhausted sort of tone — but it's lacking its usual bite.
"Why did you let me come with you?" He's been biting back the question from the moment they set off from the refugee camp, from the moment Rush had returned to the camp and declared that he could stop this, or at least protect whoever was left. The man had exuded such confidence no one had even thought of questioning him — well, that, and the fact that he had a healed bite mark and no other symptoms. After all, everyone had thought him dead, long ago left behind on an expedition for supplies, after he'd fallen victim to an ambush.
Or so went the story Young had told them.
Very few people knew the truth, and so no one had really questioned it when Young had imposed himself as the second half of the two-man expedition to the lab. But Rush had known — and yet he'd not argued. Had looked at Young, with that piercing, intent gaze of his, and nodded, and that had been that.
Rush smiles humorlessly. "Why not?"
Young shifts in his seat again, suppressing a wince that has nothing to do with the pain. "You know why."
"Because you left me behind to die," Rush says flatly. "Is that it?"
Young swallows. "Yes."
Rush shrugs. "You did what you thought was best for the camp. I can respect that."
"Bullshit."
Rush smiles, apparently genuinely amused. "I assure you, colonel, I appreciate the logic. If anything, I hadn't thought you had it in you."
"I'm not a colonel anymore."
"Well, you certainly fucking act like you are."
Young looks down at his hands, scraped and dirt-stricken. "You were endangering everyone. Bringing samples back into the camp. Undermining the structure we'd built."
"If by undermining you mean questioning why the military should be in charge of a civilian outpost, then sure."
"You tried to frame me for murder."
Another shrug, remarkably remorseless. "It seemed like a necessary evil at the time. A gamble, to be sure, but an important one." His smile is cutting, sardonic. "A gamble that turned rather against me, in the long run, I suppose."
Young looks away, through the cracked window, at the rolling fields, overgrown and abandoned. "You'd left me no choice."
"It doesn't matter. In the end, I'd never have discovered my immunity without it." Rush drums his fingers against the steering wheel, a quick staccato that somehow manages to look musical. "Suppose that means you did everyone a favor, really."
It fits with the pragmatic front Rush always tries so hard to project — but there's a tension in his shoulders that belies his words and their cold practicality.
"Still," Young says quietly, "why let me go with you? You couldn't have trusted me."
"Trusted you? No." He says it flatly, matter-of-factly. "But I trusted that you'd do the right thing and do whatever it took to get me to that lab. And I was right."
Young watches him, looking for cracks in his impassive mask. "So that's it?" he asks. "Ruthless practicality?"
"What else should there be?"
Young raises an eyebrow. "You didn't hope even a little that I'd get eaten by zombies on the way? You'd be in your right."
Rush laughs. It's so startling that Young blinks a little at the sound — raw and cracked, but real.
"Well," Rush says, "I never excluded the possibility." Young bites back a smile, just in the nick of time — Rush glances at him. "But is that what you think? That I'm after revenge?"
"I never know what you think. That's the problem, Rush."
Rush smiles, small and self-deprecating. "Suppose it is," he mutters. A pause, and then, "I'm not after revenge, no. I just— I need to fix this."
"Do you really think you can?"
"I know I can."
It should sound like a boast, or an empty platitude, but it's neither. Instead, the words simmer with such a steady, quiet certainty that Young can't help but believe him.
Silence falls, but for once, it's not heavy with tension, or unspoken recriminations. Uncharacteristically, Rush is the one who breaks it.
"You asked," he says, eyes on the road, "why I didn't leave you."
"I did."
"I thought about it." His fingers drum along, a complicated rhythm that finishes convincing Young that the man is a musician of some sort. "But in the end—"
He falters, his gaze flicking to Young. Young holds the stare, and Rush looks away first.
"It seemed like a waste," he says eventually, a little feebly. "You're— Well. You're not quite what I thought."
A corner of Young's mouth lifts, and, trying not to jostle his ribs, he knocks his elbow into Rush's. "Aw," he says. "It's okay. You're not so bad either." It's true — the man is irascible and difficult and an ass at the best of times, but he's also grown on Young, in the most unexpected of ways; full of quick, dry humor he usually keeps well-hidden, and desperate to do the right thing, even if his definition sometimes clashes with Young's. The last two weeks have been educational, in more ways than one.
Rush makes a face. "I didn't say that."
"You didn't need to," Young counters cheerily.
Rush rolls his eyes, but Young doesn't miss the ghost of a smile flickering across his face; there and gone, but real. And for just a moment, it all seems possible — getting to that lab, figuring out the key to Rush's immunity, putting together a vaccine, getting out of this goddamn mess. For a moment, he believes in it all; believes they'll make it there, and back, to the camp, to the people who have turned into a family of sorts, to TJ's kindness and Eli's genius, to Greer's quiet confidence and Scott's budding leadership, to Wray, and Park, and Chloe, and Volker, and Brody, and James and all of the others, working together to keep their little community going. For a moment, Young feels hope.
They'll make it. He knows it.