This was supposed to be for day seven (AU) of Freeruka week on tumblr. Better late than never, I guess. This is set in the same universe and storyline as my other fic, Revival, but it's Eruka-centric rather than Blair-centric and it takes place further along the timeline than most of what's published for Revival.
For those of you not familiar with Revival, it's a Halo AU, but it's so distantly related to anything actually relevant to Halo that for all intents and purposes, it's a generic sci-fi AU. Idk if I even use these acronyms, but in case I do, UNSC is United Nations Space Command a.k.a. the human space military, and ONI is the Office of Naval Intelligence a.k.a. the black-ops department of badasses and spies.
A big thanks to raining-down-hearts, Bones, and zxanthe for their fantastic beta work. You guys are the best.
Part One
It's a bad sign when a man makes Eruka blush, especiallywhen she and Blair are in the act of stealing his ship, he's actively attempting to kill them, and she's recently stabbed him in the back. His blood on her knife is black as space and he's so dazed in the moments after she pulls it free that he looks like he's forgotten why he's on the ground. He stares up at her mutely, bewildered.
It's a welcome change from his previous state, a disconcerting combination of giddy and feral. He's already been shot once and reacted like he'd been stung by a mosquito, so it's safe to attribute this reaction more to the concoction she'd injected him with twenty seconds ago and less to her little stiletto knife sliding between his ribs. Given his history with the same military organization that's paying to have him tracked down, she's just glad that she and Blair are still alive after facing off against him. They had planned to take his ship while he wasn't aboard, not to fight a physically augmented fugitive from an experimental black-ops program on his own turf. Nobody is that stupid- except, apparently, she and Blair for getting themselves into such a situation. She watches him wobble and blink for a moment as he twists to face her. His eyes are a bit glazed over, but he manages to focus on her face.
"Hey," he mumbles. "You're pretty cute."
Eruka Alexei is twenty-seven years old and she's seen planets die, but her face is as red as his blood should be, so she tells herself that it's not self-consciousness or embarrassment, but anger causing her reaction. The ability to affect someone emotionally is just as much a weapon as a knife or a gun, and whether he did so intentionally or as a byproduct of the sedative is irrelevant, because no one is allowed to do that. No one except Blair, and she was an accident- an exception to the rule. She had earned that right.
Eruka rears up to kick him in the face and hopefully put an end to this ordeal, if she can summon enough energy from her admittedly insubstantial leg muscles, but she stops in midair when he speaks in a soft tone of confusion.
"Why are you mad?" He stares quizzically as he slurs the question. "You broke into my ship."
Replacing her foot without striking, she concedes that he raises a salient point. However, Blair is hurt and Sid and Nygus and the others are waiting, so she's glad to see him finally slump to the floor in unconsciousness. This long-awaited occurrence is also proof that they'll probably live to see tomorrow, so that's an unexpected bonus, despite the fact that the universe is obviously doing its very best to kill them today.
She's at Blair's side in an instant and the idiot is grinning at her with a split lip.
"I'll be fine. Just tell them to hurry up," Blair mutters. "I think I might need a doctor."
"Yeah, you think?" There's half a laugh in her voice and a flutter in her chest, because she's never felt so happy to hear someone speaking before. Blair's not bad with her fists and she can operate any machine without a slipspace drive, but this is her real power - she makes people care about her. A person like that is a dangerous friend to have, and probably not one Eruka would make of her own volition, but it's too late to go back now.
"Just don't move."
"Yeah, yeah," Blair sighs. "Still, I had him on the ropes."
Clearly the blows to the head haven't made Blair any smarter. The adrenaline is still making Eruka's heart kick, so she takes a moment to calm herself from the high of combat before she calls Sid. Then she leaves Blair behind to find the ship's control console. Unfamiliar with this class of vessel, she opts to let it run its preset course and coast once it's completed it, rather than override that course and risk stopping it short before they've escaped the planet's orbit.
It's only after she checks one more time to make sure Blair isn't concussed that she gives the fugitive lying on the floor a closer look. He's actually sort of handsome, in an unconventional sort of way, and that's as far as Eruka lets the thought get before she shuts it down. Even if she did share any of Blair's cheesy ideas about romance, it would be pointless to harbor them in the context of a man she's about to send, in the most optimistic scenario, to a UNSC prison.
While she's not confident that spontaneous fights with ex-military fugitives isn't part of her job description, she still feels like she deserves a raise, and Sid is going to hear about it when they get back.
The next time she sees him is three years later, and this time she's breaking him out of prison.
Shaula Gorgon had promised a small fortune, plus some shiny new tracking tech that Eruka is itching to get her hands on, and that alone is enough to make her salivate, but she's is pretty sure that Blair is accepting the mission purely for the irony of it all. She had started laughing- really, genuinely laughing- when she saw that man's face come up on the viewscreen in the request Shaula sent. Eruka had perked up at the sound, because laughing isn't something Blair does anymore, not since what happened to the Black Cat. It actually alarmed her to hear that pleasant sound just as much as it brought a grin to her face, because she had no idea what could have elicited that type of response.
She worries about what will happen if a job goes wrong one of these days and one of them doesn't make it. The two of them are like a binary star: they keep each other centered. Eruka feels a bit self-important at the thought, but Blair might well spin out of control without her there to keep Blair in check, and though she's still reluctant to admit it to herself, she knows that she needs Blair just as much as Blair needs her. Eruka doesn't like the idea of being dependent on anyone else, but it's better than being alone in a universe that's chewed her up and spat her back out.
She had taken a deep breath in anticipation and followed Blair's gaze to find a scruffy, hard-set jaw she hadn't expected she'd ever see again. Later, when Shaula's inside contact helps them get hulking UNSC prisoner out of his cell and out of the compound without being seen, Eruka expects to have to restrain the newly freed man and perhaps even drug him again. She expects that making him come along with them will require force, to say nothing of keeping him from getting revenge once he recognizes them. She would feel bad for having stabbed him the last time, but Blair's life had been in danger, and that's enough to justify murder. None of her expectations are met, and it unnerves her is how damn casual he is about the whole experience- like it's every day he gets caught by mercs and thrown in jail for going AWOL from his experimental military black-ops program, and then broken back out of jail by the same crew that was hired to catch him in the first place.
She decides not to think too much on it once they've docked on Talitsa and delivered him to Shaula and whoever else it is in Gorgon Enterprises that wants him alive, but she flips when he comes sauntering back three days later asking if they have a vacancy on the ship. He says that all the blonde scientist lady had wanted was a sample of his blood, that she suggested he stay alive in case she wants more later.
"But I don't owe her anything else," he adds. She doesn't actually expect Blair to agree to take him on, but maybe she should, because Eruka knows that making her squirm is a form of entertainment for Blair. She's a bitch like that- in a lovable, dependable, constant pain in the ass sort of way.
She watches his every move like a hawk, because no one can be as laid back as he appears to be. She still half expects him to kill her in her sleep, but time passes and he doesn't give her reason for alarm other than brazen disregard for privacy or personal space. He walks up behind her and reaches over her shoulder to grab a snack from the shelf she's standing right in front of. In fact, the most frightening thing about him, besides his sheer size, is his choice of snack. Who enjoys condensed protein? No mentally stable, rational human being, that's who.
It's not often that they hire outside hands for a mission, since mercenaries aren't consistently trustworthy, and it doesn't sit well with her or Blair to hire someone when they know that Shaula might have that person killed after the job, just to be on the safe side. It makes it unethical to even hire temporary crew. Besides which, they're always too talkative, too engaged with her or Blair- usually Blair, thank all that is good- but Free doesn't bother to try and impress or to fill empty air with emptier words.
What's most unusual is that he seems not to mind her shooting him icy glares and giving him the cold shoulder. It's like he doesn't expect to be spoken to, and though she's not complaining, she can't honestly tell herself she's satisfied. She'd anticipated stupidity in the form of overconfident masculine bravado, and as nice as it is not to have to put up with that, she doesn't like being proven wrong.
His company could almost be construed as pleasant, if his physical presence weren't such an unsettling force. It would also help if she weren't constantly waiting for him to slip up and looking for an excuse to dismiss him as unreliable. She doesn't foresee him staying on the Hallows Eve for more than a month before he feels his debt to them is paid, but they complete one mission, then another, and then a third, and still he makes no mention of leaving. He doesn't ask about pay, and looks downright surprised when he's handed a currency card. He shrugs and accepts it, and she scratches her head at the new crewmate that she's forced to admit has drawn her curiosity.
"I'll give you four thousand for it."
"Four thousand for a cloud modulator. Are you making fun of me?"
The seller makes a dramatic show of being offended and Eruka rolls her eyes. It's hot and her shirt is bunching up at the elbows again, which annoys her because it means she has to keep pushing the sleeves up. She tries to force the frustration out of her acting voice. "Please. This thing? You could probably sell it to me in front of a UNSC official and it wouldn't be worth the expense to prosecute us over it."
"No deal."
"Well, if you're going to be stubborn about it," she replies with emphasis, "I guess you should tell me what you're asking for it."
"Nothing. What are you gonna do with it anyway? You don't look like a merc," the man sneers.
He's baiting her so she'll tell him who she is and show him how much she wants it. He'd better try again. "Maybe I'm not a merc. Doesn't matter if I'm using it as a coffee table as long as I pay, right? Better for you, even, since there'll be fewer of them on the market."
"Not if you're only paying four. These go for eight."
"Bullshit." Actually, they go for seven twenty-five. He's not bothering to exaggerate by very much, which means that either he can tell that she knows what she's doing or he's desperate to sell. In either case, he should capitulate soon.
"Are you calling me a liar?" He asks with such conviction that Eruka has to resist the urge to roll her eyes twice in the same conversation. Perhaps a change of course is in order.
"I'm calling you a good businessman. You'd be smart to sell it to me high if I didn't know what I was about."
"Flattery won't get you anywhere."
"Neither will a spare cloud modulator. I don't see anyone else lining up, and I do know what I'm doing here, so four is the best deal you're going to get."
"You know, you're starting to piss me off."
He appears genuinely annoyed now. She needs to get the conversation under control. "Alright, look," Eruka sighs. "At least make me a deal."
He huffs and makes it show of how reluctant he's supposed to be, then offers the hardware for six fifty. She needs to get it down to five twenty-five or they won't be able to afford it.
"Look, if I had six fifty I'd be asking for something more reliable, but I have a budget. Five twenty-five, I can live with."
"Six twenty-five and that's as low as I'll go."
He'd better be bluffing.
She fights back her fear. If they can't replace their busted old modulator, they'll be relying on stealth plating alone, and that might cut it with the military, but the top twenty percent of mercs will spot them from across the solar system and they won't stand a chance at flying under the radar, metaphorically. They'll have to either find some serious firepower or speed to compensate when the old device conks out on them, or else steal this man's merchandise and risk whatever negative consequences would come of doing very bad business.
She looks back from the product to the man's eyes, but finds that they're wide as saucers and staring right over her shoulder. Naturally, that spikes her paranoia and she turns around-
"Hi, Eruka."
She jumps half a meter into the air at the asshole standing directly behind her. She's used to seeing the enormously muscular torso and intimidating teeth, but it's still a bit of a shock when it catches her off-guard, especially when he completely ignores personal space, so she pins him with a look that could bore a hole through steel plating. Unimpressed, he looks to the merchant. She expects that he's seen mercs before, but it's entirely possible that Free is the most intimidating one he's seen to date.
"How did you find me?" How did he even get here? That aside, things were going poorly enough before she had a distraction. He's the last thing she needs right now.
He doesn't seem to have heard her, because he's fixated on the merchant, who appears to be unable to break eye contact. It must be Free's artificial eye that has him simultaneously mesmerized and terrified. That or any other part of him, really.
"Is that the thing we need," he asks without turning to look at her.
He asks it all calm and collected too, like he didn't just make his way from the dropship halfway across the town to her, without any clear means of tracking her down. "The cloud modulator. Yes."
"So let's go. Blair's wants to get back to the Hallow's Eve. She got us another job."
"Well, give me a minute. We still need to work out a price."
He raises an eyebrow in derision. "What have you been doing all this time? Did you get lost?"
She has to make a conscious effort not to puff her cheeks out in a pout, because she knows it looks childish and that equates to weakness. "We haven't agreed on a price," she grinds out. "I'm working on it."
"Hey," Free tells the merchant as he leans just a little closer to the guy, enough so to cast a shade over him . "Sell her the thing."
The man gulps and explains in a thin voice, "Sure, it'll be six thousand two-hundred fifty-"
"I told you, that's too high," Eruka. "Five twenty-five."
"You heard her."
The man shifts uncomfortably.
"I'm in a hurry," Free tells him.
"Just sell me the damn thing," Eruka sighs in frustration with both the merchant and her randomly appearing crewmate, and the poor sod finally relents. She hands over the money and makes as if to put the device in the bag slung across her back, but Free hefts it under his arm and stalks away silently, leaving her to follow behind him. She doesn't like following behind him and she definitely doesn't like being caught unaware.
"What the fuck," she hisses. "You creep up on me and barge in on my job? I had it under control."
"Well excuse me for helping."
"I don't need help, and you're not excused. Next time, mind your own business."
"If I minded my own business, we would still be standing there," he says dispassionately, and she finds that her steps are becoming stomps. "Why do we need this anyway? Five twenty-five is a lot of money."
"Because we need it."
"Yeah, but why? You know what, fuck it. It's probably boring anyway."
"It alters the cloud of electromagnetic forces created by your ship's systems at a molecular level around the exterior of the ship, which it accesses through the ship's main infrastructure, rendering you invisible to even high-level tracking systems and anti-stealth tech. That's why. Now if you could walk and shut the fuck up at the same time, that would be great."
Evidently fascinated, he stops in his tracks and stares for a moment, and then speaks again, all of which, as she recalls, is the exact opposite of walking and shutting the fuck up. "Huh. That's pretty crazy."
He begins to walk again and she deflates in a pure loss of motivation to even be angry anymore.
"Oh, and I found you because I have x-ray vision and I can fly."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Free."
He laughs at his own dumb comment for a solid four seconds, then promptly follows up in a more sober tone with, "But seriously, I can see through buildings with my tech eye. For short periods at a time, obviously."
Well, she thinks, obviously.
Eruka doesn't argue with Blair about leaving Excalibur in charge of the Hallow's Eve anymore. He has proven himself to be perfectly capable when it comes to running the ship unsupervised, though threads of doubt still weave through her mind at the thought of leaving any AI, let alone that particular one, in full control of their ship while they descend to a planet's surface in a pelican dropship.
She isn't conscious that she's worrying about it again until Blair elbows her in the ribs and tells her to cut it out. She scowls down at Levosia through the cockpit window and wonders exactly when Blair had acquired the ability to read her like an open book. It strange to have someone respond to an issue that she isn't voicing concern for.
"It'll be fine, like it always is. He wrote a subroutine to shut down all higher functions if the rampancy takes over, remember? It's like having it all on automatic pilot."
"I know, I know," Eruka mutters dismissively, and kicks her feet up on the control panel. "It would only take once though." She looks past Blair towards the doorway at the odd rhythmic scraping sound coming from the back of the dropship. "What's that noise?"
Blair peers around the corner. "Free's sharpening his knife." Knife is an understatement. Eruka has seen that thing, and while it's a knife in terms relative to his body size, Eruka would likely need two hands to wield it. Sword would be a better description.
"Hey," Blair whispers and moves in close to Eruka's ear. "Have you noticed that he kind of avoids me? He always looks a little spooked when I walk into a room." She frowns in thought. "Do you think he's intimidated by me?"
Eruka ponders the plausibility of that situation for a moment and deems it above her daily life's minimum threshold of absurdity. She pictures the hulking mountain of a man with an assault rifle strapped to his back and a short sword tucked into his coat cowering before the tall, purple-haired captain, standing with her hands on her hips and her chin held high. "Yeah, probably."
Blair breaks into a silent tantrum of jumping up and down and shaking her fist at the world, and plops down against the wall beside her seat with a pout. "But I'm so loveable," she huffs with exaggerated frustration. "Just because I'm captain of a mercenary ship, doesn't mean people should be scared of me. I'm a lover, not a fighter."
"Well, you did voluntarily go hand to hand against him, so I'd go ahead and say you're a fighter. You also stole his ship, got him thrown into prison, and then broke him back out."
"But that was forever ago and it doesn't mean I don't have feelings," Blair whines.
"It was like four months ago, and don't worry- everybody knows you have plenty of feelings," Eruka deadpans, and receives a satisfying death glare from Blair under the wide brim of her hat. That strange, wide-brimmed pointed hat is something Eruka had worn since before Blair ever met her, and she chuckles at the thought that her tastes may have rubbed off on Blair. She lets her mind wander for a while as the dropship cruises down through the planet's atmosphere, until Blair interrupts her train of thought.
"Hey. I want you and Free sticking together on this one-" Blair lifts a hand when Eruka opens her mouth to protest. "I don't care if you don't like it- I need you two working in sync. I mean it. We have too much intel up front on this target for him not to be dangerous. Sheila wouldn't have bothered collecting anything if he wasn't important."
"What do you mean by important?"
"Well… how does she get this much intel on someone? Either the person is somehow easily accessible or she has some other reason for knowing their business. Judging from the fact that we rarely gather information on anyone in the public eye, I think the odds are that these missions are, you know… personal."
Eruka stews for a moment in her general distrust of Gorgon Enterprises and just about everything else related to her homeworld of Talitsa. "Oh." A simple explanation suddenly falls squarely into place in her mind, and she sits up to remove her feet from the control panel in front of her. "You think they're using us against other mercs."
Blair gives her a crooked grin that doesn't carry any amusement, but rather grim recognition. "We walk a fine line between asset and liability. I'm sure some don't pay that line as much attention as they should."
"Something about that doesn't feel right."
"Obviously not. We'r taking a job like this from an employer that might later hire someone else to do the same to us."
"We'll just have to be quicker on the draw than whoever they send," Eruka answers, but without conviction.
"I bet our target thought the same thing," Blair says pointedly as she stands up and brushes herself off, gesturing with her chin that Eruka should get up. "Let me take over for a bit. Have a break."
"Blair, we're like twenty minutes off the surface."
"So take a twenty minute break," she replies with amusement. Eruka rolls her eyes and gets up. She can't say she truly minds her friend's harassment. This Blair is preferable to the one she had to deal with a year or even a few months ago. Eruka loves her either way, but it's nice to see Blair in the habit of smiling, even if it's at her expense. Truthfully, they've both changed for the better.
Blair plops herself down into the pilot's seat and crosses her feet on the control panel and her hands behind her head. Taking that as her cue to leave, Eruka walks out to find that Free has fallen asleep with his blade, sufficiently sharpened, laying across his lap. She briefly considers yelling in his ear to scare him awake, but the light reflecting off of the knife convinces her that it's a terrible idea.
"Hey," she says evenly, "nap time's over."
Free's head bobs up and grunts groggily as he blinks sleep away. "Hm. Yeah, I'm awake. Not sleeping."
"'Course you are."
He drops the knife onto the bench beside him, stands up, and stretches, his enormous wingspan forcing Eruka to take a step back.
"I already regret waking you up."
He ignores her and moves towards the exit ramp of the dropship, which is, of course, closed. Eruka doesn't say anything, not sure if she wants to watch him be confused because it's entertaining or because it's just too much effort to talk. It's only once he's standing in front of what would be an open ramp, if they were on the surface, that he's alert enough to realize that he can't exit the ship yet.
"Are we still in space?"
"Mhm."
He pauses and turns to stare her down in irritation.
"Then why did you wake me up?"
"Because I'm a bitch and I enjoy making other people suffer," she responds with arms crossed. "Because I want to talk about the mission, Free. Sit back down."
"Well, I'm awake now- thanks- so, I'm all set."
"Can you just- okay, were you listening when we debriefed earlier?"
"Yes," he answers in a surprisingly cutting tone. She wonders if he's taken the question as an insinuation that he's somehow incompetent, and whether that's a reflection on her tendency to distrust and disregard others or an indication that he feels like he's treated like less than he is. Or maybe he's just annoyed that you woke him up. She decides to disregard the whole thing rather than overthink it.
"Does it strike you as odd that we have so much intel on a target, for once? That we know where he's going to be and when, because Shaula already knew? You'd think whoever gathered that information could go ahead and kill the guy while they're at it, but instead they report back and she sends us. Why?"
He spends a moment in thought, then exhales forcefully and shakes his head. "I don't know. Maybe no one gathered it for her. She could just know the guy."
"You're not as dumb as you look."
She's not sure if that's a wise thing to say considering his current attitude, but it's already out of her mouth and that looks like maybe an fraction of a grin on his face, so she's probably safe.
"So Blair was thinking we stick together and she works separately."
He looks confused again. "I thought that was a thing already."
Thinking back on it, Eruka has been paired with Free quite a bit recently and she hadn't really questioned it. "No, well, I- is it? I don't know. Anyway, we're doing that again."
"Alright."
"I'll lead."
"Do you ever not?"
"Is that a problem?"
"No. It's better that way. All I have to do is follow orders."
Huh. "Okay. Well, good. Because I was going to say 'get used to it.'"
"I've been used to it."
"Oh." She has a vague idea of what he means, that idea mostly consisting of the acronym ONI, which to her means superhuman soldiers, spies, and absolute secrecy. It must carry an even deeper and more unpleasant meaning for someone who fled from it. It reminds her how much she doesn't know about him.
"Right," she says. She'll do it like she's always done before, treating the plan like she would if it were just her and Blair. "Just follow me and back me up. We're going to keep our distance if we can. If we can't, at least there'll be three of us. Blair will come from the other side. If our intel is right, he'll be engaged with two others. We don't know whether they're hostile to us as well, so we'll hang back as far as we can and see if they manage to kill him first."
He looks unimpressed, even a bit let down, and once she's finished, he grunts in bored agreement and returns to his seat to lean against the wall and close his eyes. Eruka isn't sure whether to interpret his attempt to go straight back to sleep as some lazy, passive form of defiance. It doesn't make any sense, since he said he likes taking orders.
No, she corrects herself, he said he's used to it.
She grabs her equipment and makes sure her footsteps are loud as she does it, and she enjoys the snap of the door sealing itself behind her once she's back in the cockpit. Taking in Eruka's scowl, Blair gives her a quizzical look that she ignores as she removes her jacket. She strips off her long-sleeved shirt to put her body armor in place over her tank top and accidentally glances back in Blair's direction. She receives a suggestive waggle of the eyebrows that forces her to combat an internal assault by a chuckle. She manages to turn it into a simple eye-roll.
"What's wrong now?"
"Nothing, Blair."
"Come on, talk."
"I'm good."
"I can tell when you're lying-"
"Blair!"
Blair sighs. "I can't believe you think I'm the one full of emotions."
Eruka has never been more glad for Shaula paying in tech as she is when the guy with the black ponytail stops running away and starts fighting back. She activates the device she's wearing on her forearm and a translucent blue energy shield large enough to cover a person of Free's height projects itself out from her arm. Their target looks like a stiff with an emotionless face and bad taste to boot. Who wears an off-white cloak and military camo pants?
Clearly blending in is not part of his repertoire, but judging from the size of the gun he's pulling out, that cloak is more for weapon concealment than style. She hopes that he's smart- that he takes into account how his bullets could ricochet if he fires in close quarters like this- but apparently he either doesn't realize or doesn't care about consequences, because he points what can only be a sniper rifle at her, judging from the sheer length of it, and shoots without bothering to look down the sizeable scope attached to the top of the barrel.
She's close enough to see the lifeless gray of his pupils, and she has a distant nagging feeling that she's seen his face before. Though the shield doesn't give in, her arm feels the brunt of the impact and she almost hits herself in the face with her hand as his bullet bounces up through the ceiling. She quickly develops a specific, personalized hatred for the apathetic expression he wears when he pulls the trigger again. The bullet bounces off the shield and back over his own shoulder, and this time he doesn't fire again. She laments the missed opportunity- if she'd somehow been able to deflect his shot a few centimeters to the left this confrontation would have been over.
Finally acting with some sense, unfortunately, he replaces his rifle and swiftly ducks past the the end of the corridor. For a split second she doesn't understand his hasty retreat, but then the sound of automatic gunfire pounds her right ear like a hundred hammers and she's certain she's going to have a headache when this is all over- from frustration if not from the sheer volume.
Free doesn't catch him with any of the rounds pouring from his assault rifle, but at least he's managed to keep the bastard at bay, and that might be worth a headache if it keeps her in one piece. If nothing else, he's made a pretty spread of bulletholes on the far wall. It could be a work of art. She could title it Maybe if Your Aim Wasn't Shit.
If only Blair were there to sneak around and shoot him in the back, they'd be golden, but no, things just had to be complicated. She'd have assumed that the people their target was trying to kill were civilians, influential politicians at most, but of course it couldn't be that easy. She almost wishes they were civilians, because even at their worst, jittery civilians would only be an inconvenience, while that blue-haired punk and his partner already proved that they're determined to be more of a nuisance today than any civilian could ever be.
Eruka gives Free a nod that he returns, and begins to advance towards the target. Free keeps his end assault rifle pointed down the corridor just past the end of the energy shield, and he fires off a few rounds when the target's hand pokes around the corner with a very noisy pistol in an attempt to keep them at bay. The pistol bullets explode on impact, and this tells Eruka that they were correct in assuming him to be a mercenary. She can't imagine anyone else would be this well armed, aside from a soldier, and this man is no soldier. In fact, she's fairly certain she's seen the same type of pistol in a Gorgon Enterprises weapon stockpile.
The sound of a bouncing grenade is considerably unimposing in comparison to the sound it makes when it detonates. She feels silly for it, but she actually gets the urge to kick the small, greenish-gray fragmentation grenade back down the hall when she sees it come skidding to a stop on the floor against the bottom of her energy shield. She gets the irrational impulse to drop her shield and run and narrowly prevents her instincts from kicking in and getting her killed. Free doesn't get a chance to react before she's knocked backwards through the air into Free's chest and they're both sent sprawling onto their backs in front of the elevator door.
Eruka feels like she's just woken up from a nap when she opens her eyes. Her ears ring loudly and her pulse throbs in her head with a pain she's sure isn't leaving anytime soon. She lifts her head enough to catch sight of a gaping hole in the ground where they had once stood, the walls crumbling and charred, and the ceiling peppered with metal. It seems that Free isn't shaken, because he's back on his feet and firing the rest of his mag down the hall as he drags her into the elevator with a look of pure rage on his face. His gun clicks empty and there are two seconds between when he hits the button on the elevator door and when the doors begin to close. In that time, their target turns the corner with a large tube slung over his shoulder. She tells herself that there is no way any sane human being with any sense of self-preservation would fire a rocket down a not-very-long hallway, because that would just be insanity, but at a split-second glance there can be no doubt- this fucker really is leveling a goddamn rocket launcher at their elevator.
She's stunned to have her vision abruptly obscured by Free's chest, and she hears the simultaneous whoosh of the projectile and the impact of it exploding against the closing doors at about the same time that those doors crash into Free's back, Free crashes into her, and the ground falls out from under her feet. She's not sure when she begins to trust him with her life, but she knows that it's between when her feet no longer have anything to stand on and when she instinctively reaches out to grab him and finds that he's already under her. When she comes to a jarring halt, it's not against a hard metal floor, but against Free's chest. She feels a sharp pain and for a moment she's unsure how she ended up against the far wall of the elevator, but she knows from the pounding pain directly on top of her skull that she hit it at an odd angle. Her world spins, and a wave of relief washes over her when she sees Free struggling to push himself off the floor.
"I think I broke something," he groans, and they exchange a moment of dazed eye contact before she comes to her senses and realizes that if he were physically a normal human being, his skull would probably be in pieces on the floor right now. She puts off her incredulity for later, because they still have a job to do. She clicks on her earpiece to get Blair's attention. She yells into it, but gets no response.
A string of gunfire breaks out from somewhere outside the building, and then all is quiet. Free rights himself and Eruka marvels that he can still walk. They stumble out of the wreck of an elevator shaft and towards the exit, where people are either shoving past each other to leave or standing hunched behind pillars and staring in awe at the two debris-covered, gun-wielding freaks limping through the doors. Finally, Blair's voice streams into her ear.
"Where are you guys?"
"You won't believe what happened," Blair yells to them as she sets the Pelican's course. "I made friends with the two that had the hit put on them."
"You made friends," Eruka says. "That is unbelievable."
"You almost died half an hour ago. How do you even have the energy for sarcasm," Blair asks through the doorway. Eruka helps Free stagger to one of the benches on walls of the pelican and he straps himself in with a grunt of pain. Sarcasm is essentially her life-force, but the question was probably rhetorical, so she opts not to answer it. "Anyway," Blair continues, "it turns out I know the girl. She was a refugee from Greydowns. Remember when we picked up a bunch of survivors with Sid and Nygus?"
"Hmm. Yeah, but I never spoke much to them."
"Well, her name is Tsubaki. Masamune is her brother, and he was aboard the Black Cat too."
Eruka's eyes go wide. "Seriously?"
"Small universe, right?"
"We dropped them off on Talitsa, didn't we?"
"Yeah. They're not sure why he's after them, but it looks like they work for the Gorgons too, and so does Masamune. The blue-haired one is Tsubaki's partner, by the way."
"I kinda figured… So you think they sent us after Masamune to prevent him from killing them?" Eruka wonders aloud. "Or to make sure there are no survivors?"
A moment passes in silence. "Maybe Shaula is playing games. Maybe she wants Tsubaki and her partner dead, maybe she wants Masamune dead, maybe both. I don't know." Blair sighs. "I'm just glad you two made it out of that building alive. Speaking of which," Blair says as she turns to Free, "should we be getting you to a doctor?"
"I'll be good," he answers. They both stare at him. "I'll be fine!"
"You fell five stories and landed on your back."
He waves Blair's comment off. "Augmentations. I'll be sore for a week, but if I broke anything it's already fixed itself."
"If you say so." Blair shrugs. Eruka gives Blair a look, and for once Blair saunters away into the cockpit without giving her a hard time. "But when we get back, I want you to take it easy anyway. Just to be safe." She shuts the door behind her, leaving silence in her wake.
Eruka takes a seat next to Free, shoulder to shoulder, and they keep that silence for a while- the only sound is their breathing, Free's coming out with a slight wheeze. Eruka turns the last few months over in her mind again and again and holds them up against the doubts she's held onto for months, now frail and unreasonable in the face of the evidence stacked against them. She fidgets in place, then takes a deep breath and speaks.
"Listen, Free…"
"Hm?"
"I- uh…" She tries to find the right words, but realizes she's started talking before she's figured out what to say. "I kind of- um…"
He peers at her curiously. What is she saying? Is she apologizing for subtly being an asshole, or thanking him for keeping her from falling to her death? She shakes her confusion off and starts anew.
"Thanks for watching my back. I haven't been giving you enough credit. I judged you before I should have, and I'm sorry that I did."
He stares at her wide-eyed.
"And if you'll keep watching my back, I'll watch yours," she finishes. "So there."
They both stare, waiting for the other to speak or processing what she said, she's not sure which. Free opens his mouth to respond, but closes it again. A grin slowly works its way onto his face.
"Doesn't really seem like a fair trade."
She blinks. "W-what?"
"Well, your back is a lot smaller than mine, so... you're not getting a very good deal."
She blinks again, then whacks him in the shoulder as hard as she can. "Here I am-"
"Ow!"
"-being sincere-"
"Ow!"
"-and you're making fun of me!" He starts laughing so hard that he begins to cough violently, and wheezes out a few curses. "Serves you right."
As soon as he has his breath back, he starts chuckling again, so she punches him one more time for good measure and wonders if she's in over her head having two obnoxious teammates.