When Gorman is finally up and walking again, she hauls off and punches him once, hard, in the arm, and he earns himself an ounce of her grudging respect by not flinching.
He avoids her eye, though, looking down somewhere by her left shoulder. "Is that all?" he asks, politely, like he's asking if she's had enough to eat.
Vasquez grits her teeth and shakes her head. She still wants to beat him bloody for every death he caused, cave his skull in and make him a permanent resident of the medlab. But he can handle a gun, and they're going to need every able body they have to get through this alive. She curls her hand into a tight fist, nails digging into her palm, and says, "We'd just have to drag your useless ass around again if I knocked you out."
He nods like that's a fair and reasonable assessment and finally looks up to her face. "Look, I know that I failed in my– that I fucked this one up," he says, and she raises a curious eyebrow at both the admission and the brief drop in formality, "but I'm ready to do whatever is needed to help pull the rest of us through this operation successfully."
She eyes him up and down doubtfully. He's got a squinty, unfocused look beneath the bandages that suggests he's still feeling a lot of that concussion, but he's pulled himself up tall and straight in spite of it, and his jaw is set and determined. He looks like a real Marine for once, not some perfectly creased kid with a stick up his ass, and it kind of makes her want to jab him in the stomach, just to see him cringe and double over like she would more typically expect from him. She refrains, shrugs with one shoulder instead. "Yeah? Well, prove it, pendejo," she says without any real venom.
"Excuse me?"
She leans over to tap his sidearm, two fingers sharp against the pistol's grip. "You were a shit leader, Gorman. Let's see if you can fight with the grunts instead."
He reaches across himself quickly to put his hand on the gun, nearly catching her fingers as she pulls back, and scowls with grim determination. "That won't be a problem," he promises.
She looks him over one more time and then nods, satisfied, and returns to her patrol, leaving her anger behind in the corridor.
She's never thought Gorman was a coward, just an asshole in over his head, and when he pulls out the grenade as the creatures advance on them, his other hand gripping her arm hard enough to bruise and his heart pounding furiously against her back, Vasquez knows she was right. She grabs at his hand around the grenade, tangling her fingers with his, and leans back while Gorman rests his chin against the top of her head and swallows hard.
She'll die with a comrade, on their own terms and with their eyes open. There are far worse ways to go.