Convergence
Chapter Ten: Loyalty

A/N- Some might call this slightly AU. I prefer to think of it as an expanded scene.

"Quiet, Riley! Your job's finished here."

Rich people are jerks.

The thought sprang into Riley's mind, completely uninvited, as he maintained a death grip on the ropes in the Charlotte's cargo hold. Under any other circumstances, he'd have some snide comment to make about Ian saying "I'll shoot your friend" and Shaw holding the gun, but somehow he couldn't quite bring himself to make any wisecracks right now.

So having a gun pointed at you by someone you'd been working with for half a year was just a little sobering.

A sharp crack drew his attention, and Shaw's gun, back to Ben, who was now illuminated by a pinkish light. Riley did a double take, trying to convince himself that he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing. A flare. A very live flare. Burning. In the cargo hold. The cargo hold full of gunpowder.

You've got to be kidding.

"Look where you're standing." Ben's voice was perfectly calm, confident, maybe even a little stronger than usual. He might as well have been telling them about the historical pedigree of the wood. "All that gunpowder. You shoot me, I drop this, we all go up."

Riley did not relinquish his hold on the ropes. "Ben..." You are not doing anything to prove you're not crazy! But he didn't say that, maybe because he couldn't see any other way to get out of this mess. If Ben actually thought this would work, he was game.

For a moment or two, the chances looked pretty good as Ian backed off, watching him nervously. Then his eyes narrowed. "What happens when the flare burns down?" For the first time, Ben's confident mask cracked, just a little, and the blond man pressed his advantage. "Tell me what I need to know, Ben."

"You need to know..." For a moment, Ben was silent. Only a moment. Then his eyes glinted and he looked past Ian to his henchman. "...if Shaw can catch!"

With that, he threw the flare.

Riley didn't see what happened next, because he was busy squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the earth-shattering kaboom. When it didn't come, after several very long seconds, he dared to open one eye, and immediately wished he hadn't. Apparently Shaw couldn't catch. Ian, however, could, and he was standing there holding the flare and grinning.

He gestured to Ben with the flaming tool, because nothing can go wrong waving something that spits sparks around in a room full of gunpowder, looking genuinely amused. "Nice try though." It sounded like he was going to continue, but right about then the flare decided it still wanted a say in the matter.

The next thing he knew, Ian's sleeve was on fire, and the flare had dropped to the floor. "ARGH!"

I so called that.

Riley took approximately half a second to congratulate himself for his prediction, then went into panic mode. The rapidly spreading fire was bad enough, and the fact that Shaw had gone into a panic mode which included bullets spraying everywhere didn't help. Nothing had exploded yet, so he figured the bullets were his biggest problem and dropped down behind a box.

"Get out, Shaw! Get out!"

Well, at least Ian had concern for his evil minions. The next thing Riley heard over the roar of the flames was the door to the cargo hold slamming shut and locking, which gave him a rather less warm and fuzzy feeling. Maybe a warm and toasty feeling.

In the meantime, Ben was stomping around the other side of the cargo hold. Before Riley could ask what in the world he was doing, he seemed to find what he was looking for, leaned down, and unearthed a snow-covered trapdoor.

"Riley, get over here!"

Well, it beat the alternative. He darted across the not-yet-burning areas of the hold and looked down at what Ben had dug up. "What is this?"

"Smuggler's hold. Get in!"

Privately he questioned the logic of going further into the burning ship, but it wasn't as if he had any better ideas. Which, he reminded himself as he clambered down into the narrow corridor below, had been about his reaction to the flare threat that had gotten them into this mess. Oh well. There was only one way to go, so he went, trying to ignore the flaming timbers raining down as they passed.

Neither said another word until reaching the end of the cramped space, a small compartment with a thick metal door. "Get down!" Ben ordered, pushing Riley to the ground as if he expected the young man not to obey on his own. He slammed the door shut and dove to the ground nearby.

Right about then came the earth-shattering kaboom.

--

There's no way we're going to make it.

The explosion roared all around him, fire and sound and chaos, and all he could see was the darkness in front of him, face buried in the snow. A splitting headache came on the heals of the noise, threatening to shatter his mind with its intensity. He was dying. He knew he was dying. For a moment, he wondered if he would see Tristan again, and reflexively locked up at the thought—which was probably all that kept him from screaming.

Then as suddenly as it had begun, it was silent, and he felt a blast of frigid air coming at him from above. Turning over, he saw sunlight. A bit further, and there was Ben, stirring beside him.

...Are we dead? He doesn't look like a zombie. I don't feel like a zombie. Lemme try this... braiiiinsss, braiiiinsss... no, that doesn't seem right at all. Must be alive, then.

Riley couldn't help it. He burst into near-hysterical giggles, then almost immediately lapsed into coughs in the ash-filled air.

The two quietly extracted themselves from the wreckage, checking briefly for any injuries, then Ben glanced back at him. "There's an Inuit village about nine miles east of here. It's popular with bush pilots."

"Great." A nine mile hike in the snow, after a ship had exploded around them. No problem. Riley paused for a moment and just watched the older man pick his way through the remains of the Charlotte. He didn't seem too bothered by the fact that they'd nearly gone up in flames. Matter of fact, he seemed perfectly calm.

You'd think he did this every day.

Well, Ben might not be concerned by what had just happened—or why—but Riley was rapidly recovering from one shock and focusing on another.

Trust was not something he gave out lightly, of course, and if he'd been asked point-blank if he trusted Ian he'd likely have said no. But there was trust, and there was 'assuming your business associate isn't going to try to kill you,' and he'd at least given the guy that second courtesy. He sighed. That'll teach me.

Of course, there were other reasons to be worried than the close encounter with certain doom. If Ben wasn't worried about the Charlotte, he wouldn't be either, but some things would have to be addressed. "What're we gonna do now?"

"Start making our way home."

"No, I mean about Ian." Riley stumbled as he made his way out of the wreckage. "He's gonna steal the Declaration of Independence, Ben."

Ben stopped and gave him a puzzled look. "Wait. What do you mean, what are we going to do about it?"

"You did say you weren't going to let him."

"I'm not."

"Well then." He lost his footing in the snow and was silent for a few moments as he regained his balance. "That brings us back to, what're we gonna do?"

"Riley, we aren't going to do anything. Don't you realize how dangerous—"

"Yeah, actually, I think I do." Riley shot a pointed look at the wreckage around them. "Which is why there's no way I'm letting you do it on your own. So what's the plan?"

The older man remained silent, still watching him as if something about his statement was hard to understand. "Riley." He recognized that tone. "Its not that I don't appreciate the sentiment—I mean, I really do—but I can't just let you jump into this. He tried to kill you! I started this hunt knowing it was a risk, that I'd probably throw my whole life into it. I'm okay with that. But there's no reason you need to do the same thing."

You have no idea. "I'm not sure if you noticed, you do realize you're the one that just blew up the ship, right?" Riley crossed his arms. "You'd already convinced Ian not to shoot you. You were going to be fine, so you just decided maybe you ought to blow the place sky high for fun? Come on."

"Yes, and things like that are precisely why you—"

"—will not be leaving you alone to get yourself killed doing something crazy."

--

The icy air on the outside didn't even begin to compare to the chill running up Ben's spine. He liked the kid, and furthermore, he owed him a great deal. No way could he let the one person who seemed to still like him put his life on the line for this.

There was just one problem. He hadn't realized it at the time, but Riley was exactly right. He questioned the idea that he would be 'fine' just because Shaw wouldn't shoot him right then and there, but the point was still valid. With Ian threatening his life, well, that was worrying. He'd made jokes about poker. When the threat turned to his friend, things were suddenly desperate and it was time for mutually assured destruction.

Interesting, that.

"Crazy huh?"

"Yeah. I take back anything I've ever said about you not being crazy. You're a complete lunatic, Ben Gates." His eyes blazed fiercely, twin sapphire flames in the harsh Arctic sunlight. "And wherever you're going, I'm going."

This time when he shivered, it wasn't from the cold. He met Riley's gaze evenly, by now used to the way the young man's eyes could harden in an instant, knowing what to expect. But what he saw wasn't anger at being left out. Determination, and maybe desperation, but not anger.

Does he have anywhere else to go?

As soon as that thought occurred to him, he knew the answer was no, but he also knew it was irrelevant. He understood. The kid wasn't going to abandon him, because it was no longer about a treasure hunt. It had never been about a treasure hunt. First it had been about distraction. It wasn't that anymore, either.

Riley was no longer in this thing just to run from whatever he'd left behind him in Colorado. He knew it; they both knew it. They'd come too far, and in the process, become too close.

Ben found himself nodding slowly, then looked back at the smoldering ruins of the Charlotte. "You're sure about that?"

"I'm sure."

There was no arguing this any further... and, to be perfectly honest with himself, he didn't want to. Until now, he'd never really thought about what it meant for someone to believe in him. So few ever had.

"We it is, then."

Riley nodded. "So what do we do?"

"We stop him."