Chapter 34
Garden of Minos
Gaige woke slowly, the combination of the security of being in familiar surroundings as well as the pleasantness of the bed kept dragging her back under. Eventually she couldn't put it off any longer, and sat up. To her surprise, she found that she wasn't alone, at some point Artemis had crawled in next to her.
"Well, it is her bed." She muttered as she swung her feet out and stood up slowly, feeling all of the bruises and sore muscles that had built up over the last week. She pushed her hands into the small of her back and stretched, before shuffling her way out into the sitting room where she found Deathtrap idling away the time.
"Urgur" He said, as soon as he spotted her.
"Yeah, I am actually pretty hungry."
"Urguu" He said shaking his head.
"What ya mean I'm not getting any food? Is this some new kinda punishment or somethin?"
"Urgurr" He said, indicating the steaks that had been set out.
"Oh, sorry, you're right, we should wait for her."
It was a short while later that Jinx finally emerged from the bedroom, almost exactly miming the same motions that Gaige had done earlier.
"Didn't think I'd be that stiff." She grumbled as she shuffled past the other girl without a glance and into the kitchen.
"Morning." Gaige ventured.
"Or whatever." Came the reply.
Jinx whipped up the steak while Deathtrap took care of the sides and before long, they sat down for the first decent meal they'd had in a while.
"Thanks for this." Gaige said, and when she got a strange look from the other girl from around a mouthful of meat, she elaborated "Feeding me and all. And not kicking me outta the bed. And, well, everything else."
Jinx just grunted in reply, which saddened Gaige. She'd hoped that they could have a discussion over the food, but it seemed that was still a ways off. Putting that on hold, she tucked in.
After the meal, and a brief while of digestion, they both headed into the sitting room and over to the wall of guns to re-equip.
They both felt much more at ease as soon as they strapped on their familiar shields, though they both lamented that they'd lost their preferred ones. Grenades and other accessories were strapped on, leaving them to choose their guns.
"Electric is a must." Gaige said, grabbing a pair of Maliwan SMG's and setting them on the table. "Eridians are mostly shield, so they tear through them like they're nothin."
Jinx nodded and picked one of them up.
"Not gonna argue with me on that?"
"Never argue with the expert, and you know more about them than anyone else here."
Gaige smiled at that, but Jinx had her back turned so she didn't see, instead she was looking at two of the sniper rifles, trying to choose between them.
"Hard choice?" Gaige ventured.
"Hmm, this one's probably got more stopping power, but this one's lighter, and I'm already gonna be pretty laidend with gear." She said looking between the one she'd picked up on the Ranger's Iron and one that she'd had on the ship.
"Why? What else're you gonna be carrying?"
"Well, the usual assortment of things, pistol, a couple of SMGs, maybe an assault rifle, though I'm thinking of leaving that behind. Oh, and this." She said patting the Iron Hammer.
"Wait, you're seriously taking that?"
"Wainwright said that I could use it if I thought that I needed to, and I just figured that it would be better to have it then not, especially with what's usually at the end of one of these Eridian ruins."
"OK, fair point, but that thing's ridiculously heavy isn't it?"
"Eh, it's heavy, but not worse than some other things I've encountered, what I'm worried about is the recoil."
"So, fire it left handed. I mean, isn't that what you do with your backup piece?"
"You know that my cybernetic only goes up part way on my arm, right? And that the recoil is gonna go into the shoulder?"
"Right, sorry, stupid of me to say anything."
"Just think next time."
Gaige fell silent, cursing inwardly at her own stupidity. She'd know all that, so why hadn't she thought before she'd opened her stupid mouth, again. She shook her head and silently went back to choosing her own guns.
A short while later, as they were getting ready to head out, Gaige noticed that the assault rifle that Artemis had been looking at was still on the wall.
"Not taking this?" She asked.
"Nah, too much weight."
"Take it, have Deathtrap carry the Hammer, and don't worry, he won't fire it without permission."
Artemis looked at them and when Deathtrap nodded, she relented and handed the cannon over before picking up the rifle and strapping it to the side of her pack.
"Right, ready?" Gaige asked.
"As I'll ever be." Muttered the other girl and followed her to the hatch. "Be careful, there's a chance someone might be waiting outside."
Gaige bit back her retort and carefully opened the door before throwing herself out and rolling up, checking around her, but nothing happened, so the other two quickly joined her.
They made their way around the wall, following the path they had when they'd first arrived and before long were getting close to where they would have to go down to get to the Den of Bears.
"When we get there, let me do the talking." Gaige said, breaking the awkward silence they'd been traveling in.
"Yeah, I was plannin on it, especially since you're sooo much better at it." Came the snide reply.
"OK that's enough." Gaige declared coming to a halt and spinning on the other girl "Seriously."
"Now what?"
"You've been snipping and sniping at me since you woke up in that medical bed and I've had enough of it. Look, I know I deserve your scorn, I do, I deserve to have all the nastiness you can dish out heaped upon me and then some, so this might seem a bit stupid for me to be protesting about, but I'm trying, really trying here, to make it up to you, and you told me to not be too agreeable to you, and I can't really fight back, not with what I did, but if I don't say something and soon, this is gonna build up and I'm gonna snap and say something that I'll regret and that time, there really won't be a next time, so I'm gonna say it now.
"I'm trying to do the right thing here, to bite back all the snarky things that I'd usually say, I'm trying to be a better person, but each time you take a swipe at me, snap back with another put down, I feel like you don't even want me to try. Like you aren't gonna really give me a chance, that this is actually over and you're just going through the motions, and if it is, it's your call, but don't, don't give me hope if you don't mean it."
"Are you done? Cause you seem to be laboring under some delusion, I'm not treating you scornfully, the truth is that I'm just treating you like I treat everyone else that I meet, with a few exceptions. I suppose you'd know this if we'd spent more time together, and that might be where our problem really lies, that we wound up together too fast, that we never really got a chance to figure each other out, but I told you before, I'm not a nice person."
"Oh bullshit. You're not a nice person? You flew across the galaxy to find me and help me, and even after all that finished, you still let me stick around. It seemed that no matter how bad things got, you had my back, and I took that for granted, but you think you're not a nice person? You came here to reunite a dead man and his family and you didn't even know it at the time, it was just a request from someone you respected, even though he was dead and you've got no way of knowing if he'll even know what you did for him."
"Only cause you forced me to."
"Bull, you were gonna do it, you know you were. And even if you didn't want to, you could've stopped me from bringing us here, if you'd really wanted to."
Artemis didn't say anything in response, only shot Gaige a dirty look, so she continued.
"And don't tell me that we didn't know each other long enough, it didn't even take you a week to peg me and call me out. And that's why I need you, I'm terrible to myself. I'm a self-destructive monster. And when something good finally came along, someone that called me out on my worst impulses, someone that wanted me to be better than I was, what did I do? I hurt them. I didn't mean what I said, I really didn't. I just wanted to hurt you and drive you away. I realized that at the bottom of a bottle, and I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to you, if you want me to join one of those ECHOnet meetings about addiction, I'll do it. If you want me to give up on alcohol, fine, it's done me nothing but harm."
"Knock it off." Artemis interrupted her "You say you'll do anything for me? That's a lie. One of the biggest and worst ones that people say."
"I mean it."
"No, you don't. Anything you say? What if I told you I wanted you to, oh let's see, give me Deathtrap?"
"Wha?"
"I mean, as a hypothetic...whatever, if I told you that I wanted you to give Deathtrap to me, what would you say? And before you say it, I know he's got his own mind, but legally, he's yours, so the question is, what if I told you to legally hand him over to me and then leave?"
"I...no."
"See, anything means anything."
"You know what I meant."
"Yeah, you meant that anything that you could do that would help you, that would make you feel better about yourself, you'd do."
"No, it's not."
"What did you just offer? Give up booze? Get help? That's all for you. You say you'll do anything to make it up, but what're you offering me?"
Gaige paused, looking at her for a moment before sighing "You might be right, all that was for me, but that's just it, I've got nothing to offer you but to try and be a better person. To make myself worthy of the me that you see."
"I never wanted that kinda responsibility! I only wanted you to be you."
"But that's just it, until I met you, I had no one who even wanted that. Everyone I met either wanted me to change into their idealized version of me, or didn't want me, I mean, they wanted me, but not me me, they just wanted a quick screw and I wasn't interested. And you were right, I did hide in the booze, I hated myself and the fact that I knew what I really was and I loathed that, so I drowned myself away in the alcohol. The only reason nothing happened to me was that Deathtrap kept me safe, even though I didn't care myself.
"I am toxic to myself. I destroy anything good in my life, anything that tries to help me. I hate myself, so I drank, and then before I knew it, I didn't want the buzz, but the oblivion on the other side of it, to forget how much I hated the person I'd become. And then I met you, and you called me out, you tried to get me to change, and I wanted to. I really did. I wanted to be worthy of your friendship, so I tried to change myself, not to be what you wanted me to be, but to be the best version of myself that I could.
"But my self-destructive self couldn't let me have that. I tried to give up the booze, the margaritas that I loved so much, but I didn't realize how thirsty that would make me. You don't know what it's like, you couldn't know. The thirst builds, and builds, but not like any thirst that you've ever had before, you can't quench this, nothing helps, but you know that if you just give in, just one little sip, and it'll go away, that's all it'll take, just that one teeny tiny sip, but you know that if you give in, you won't be able to stop, so you try and deny it, so you try to focus on something, anything else, but it's always there, gnawing at you, clawing at your throat till you can't take it anymore and you lash out at anyone that's near, and if they're the reason for the thirst, well so much the better. You lash out, you try and drive them away, to hurt them so bad that they'll leave you alone so that you'll have no excuse to keep you away from that cure for it, that one little drink. And then you do, you lose it and destroy everything around you and eventually you come to, you're mind clears up, and you realize that you've destroyed the one thing that was worth anything, and you're desperate to get it back, but you know what that'll cost and the thirst is sitting there, waiting for you.
"Like I said, I know that I need help. But I can't do it alone, I have no reason to without you. But I also know that's not fair to you, to put that burden on you, to shackle you to me and my issues, that's why I didn't say anything earlier, why I tried to put up with all of the abuse, well, that and I knew I deserved it. But now I know that if I don't come clean, tell you what's really going on, that this is it. You might stick around till this is over and we're outta here, you've pretty much admitted that, but after that, you'll be gone, and that's it, we'll never see each other again. And that's why I offered to do anything, even though as you pointed out, I didn't mean anything.
"I know this is unfair to you, but to be honest, nothing I've done to you's been fair, and I'm sorry to lay this all on you, but this has gotta stop, we can't keep going like this, so if it's over, just tell me, but don't give me hope, don't tell me that you'll think about it, that we'll see, if you don't mean it. If you're giving me a chance, give it to me, if not, then I need to know if this is all supposed to punish me for what I did."
Jinx stared at her, expression blank and unblinking till Gaige was starting to squirm uncomfortably under it, when she finally sighed and looked away to Deathtrap, who gave her a nod that Gaige didn't understand. It was like they had some conversation that she hadn't been part of and they were just confirming what they'd thought.
Jinx looked away from him and tilted her head back, looking up to gather her thoughts for a moment before looking back down at Gaige.
"You're right, this isn't fair." She paused before continuing "None of it is, neither you saying those things, nor putting me in charge of your life and future. Not you offering yourself to me like you're some kinda payment, nor you askin me to forgive you without even offering the simplest thing, the one thing that I would've wanted from you in return."
She let out a sigh "But it's also not fair of me to offer you hope and snatch it away without giving you a chance, to tell you that we'll see, but then take every chance I can to push you away. The truth is, I'm not angry with you, not really. I guess I'd have to say I'm scared, scared of what might happen if I stay with you, scared that I might open up, let you in. Scared that I'll get hurt again, and I can't take that, no matter how much I deserve it. But I said earlier that I'd give you a chance, that we'd see how it went, and that's still the best I can offer, but this time I mean it, you try and so will I."
"Thank you, that's all I wanted." Gaige started to smile, but caught herself "Can I ask one thing though?"
"What's that?"
"You said that you only wanted one thing from me, what is it?"
She got a disappointed look. "It's the only thing that I've ever wanted from you."
Gaige thought for only a second before whispering "My friendship."
The other girl nodded.
Gaige looked at her in confusion "I can't offer that though, you've already got it."
"That was cheesy."
"Maybe, but it doesn't mean that it's not true."
She looked at the other girl and became serious "But I meant what I said, about getting help once we're outta this place. I know that I can't do it alone, and I'd really like to have a friend at my side."
"What about Deathtrap? Kinda rude to him doncha think?"
"He'll be there, but he doesn't stand up to me the way you do."
"We'll see."
"And I should warn you, as long as we're being honest here, I'm gonna say some things when I'm getting off the sauce. Mean, nasty things."
"But will you mean them?"
"I might at the time. If you've ever lost your head, you'd know what I mean."
"Like I said, we'll see. Are we done here?"
"One last thing before we head down, I meant what I said when I told you that I didn't know if I could be what you wanted me to be, but that I'd think about it."
"And I said you've got the wrong idea."
"I'm still gonna give it some thought, not just for you, but for me. You're right, I need to be me, I just need to figure out who that is."