Jimbo.
The name just slipped out and for the briefest fraction of a foolish second, Michael had the nerve to hope that his old partner –
his old friend
second father –
hadn't noticed, but of course he did. Michael couldn't place the expression that flickered across Lieutenant Courtney's face before it settled into hardened mistrust and suspicion, undershot with concern for his daughter's life.
Michael almost wanted to believe that he'd seen recognition in Jim's face. For the first time in his new life, he desperately wished someone would recognize him. There was no way Jim could recognize him, at least not physically. Several years had passed since Michael left Courtney's side when he'd been promoted. Several years since that. Hell, Michael's eyes were blue, now. Not the brown Jim had known.
Michael was stung but not surprised when Jim shot down his suggestion that they start working together. Jimbo really was much too close to be on this case, and Michael had shown up out of the blue; he knew Jim immediately and more intimately than any stranger should have. All Jim saw was a stranger, admittedly one who seemed to have a too-personal interest in finding Stacy's assailant [her potential killer, though neither man wanted to think too much about that just in case they made it come true. a superstition they refused to acknowledge they held]
Michael could feel himself slipping. He was stressed and terrified. Exhausted. Jim blamed him for Lehigh's death, and he wasn't totally wrong. Just not totally right, either. Lehigh was a dead man regardless who he raced.
Michael forced himself to relax his grip on the wheel. Kitt would notice the changes in his biometrics, but he hoped his partner would come to the most obvious conclusion and not press him for details. He wouldn't even understand himself what was happening. He just knew that he was slowly losing the stranglehold he had to keep on his emotions whenever his past life made itself known.
He knew what the guilty car looked like. Thanks to Kitt, he even knew all the technical specifications of the thing. None of it did him any good since he couldn't find it. Plan A The First had failed spectacularly, ending in Lehigh's death. Time for Plan A 2: Electric Boogaloo: challenge Taylor in front of his team and his cheerleaders. Dare him to pussy out. Maybe Michael would get lucky and Taylor would be arrogant enough or stupid enough to bring out the guilty car…
"Time for Plan B," Michael told Kitt, mind spinning almost nauseatingly. He fell back hard on who he used to be. He didn't elaborate when Kitt asked him to explain. Somehow it didn't feel necessary.
In the time it took Michael and Taylor to complete their circuit, Kitt could have easily run it several times over. Plan B required losing this pink slip race. "Michael, you lost me!" Kitt protested. Michael spared the modulator a pained glance, wondering if Kitt knew just how literal an accusation that was.
"Yeah, Kitt," Michael said, guilt clouding his voice. "This is Plan B." He began punching in the sequence of commands that would shut down nearly all of Kitt's systems, leaving only his homing beacon online. "I gotta shut you down now."
The full weight of what he'd just done hit Michael as he tossed Kitt's keys over to Taylor. Shit! Shitshitshitshitshit! His blood ran icyhot through his veins, knees nearly buckling. Under the guise of adjusting his collar, he brought the commlink close to his lips and murmured, "Hang in there, buddy." He hoped Kitt heard it before he'd shut down.
"You lost Kitt?!" Bonnie's voice shook with rage, eyes burning.
"It was the only way!" She didn't need to know that he hadn't told Kitt what he was planning. Didn't need to know that he hadn't slept for guilt and worry. "I left his homing beacon active." That had to count for something, right?
"There's too much interference," Bonnie said, somewhere between anguish and 'I'm gonna kill you, Michael Knight'. "I fucking told you that there were still some bugs to chase down on my end!"
"Can you at least get me pointed in the right direction?"
"South."
"South!" Relief shaded Michael's voice. "Devon, gonna need to borrow your keys." Devon had tossed the keys over before Michael had even finished speaking, and Michael just barely caught them before they sailed past his head.
Bonnie didn't talk much as they drove south, focused as she was on trying to isolate Kitt's homing beacon. He really thought the beacon had been full operational. His mind worked furiously. What was to the south that was relevant to the case?
"Taylor's stadium!" he blurted. Bonnie's head snapped up at his outburst. "That's gotta be where they took Kitt! Where Taylor's hiding that car of his." Sure of himself and with a renewed sense of purpose, Michael gunned Devon's car. It certainly wasn't Kitt, he thought ruefully.
Michael called Jimbo over the car phone, relaying his breakthrough. He had no doubt that Jimbo would meet him there.
Bonnie stayed with the car. She wasn't trained for this.
Michael fell in step with Jimbo like a lifetime hadn't passed since they'd worked together. Like Jimbo had maybemaybemaybe recognized his old partner's soul in the eyes of a stranger.
"Only two people knew this was on my rookie beat," Jim said meaningfully. Now wasn't the time for this conversation, though. They had to get to Taylor before he could run again.
Until he brought Kitt back online – "Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" – Michael was many years younger, working fluidly with Jimbo. Until he rejoined Kitt – "Good to be back!" – Michael planned on going out with some buddies for a beer or two to celebrate [dead men don't go out for beers with their buddies after work]
And then Stacy woke up! Despite it all, she was going to make a full recovery. Michael's heart ached with a pride he couldn't express when she said that the academy agreed to hold a spot for her. Michael and Jim walked on ahead a bit, leaving Stacy to catch up with her friends.
Once out of earshot, the men stopped. Jim turned to face Michael, that same strange look of 'I don't know why I recognize you but I do' on his face. "She's a tough kid," Michael said with conviction.
"That she is," Jim agreed. "Knight, I don't know you. I've never seen you before; never met anyone named Michael Knight." He paused, then clapped a hand to Michael's shoulder. "But I swear on my life that I know you." Another pause, and he let his hand fall back to his side. "I want you to have something." He reached into his pocked and pulled out a painfully familiar object that almost stopped Michael's heart. "Belonged to an old partner of mine, a special guy by any standards. His name was Michael Long. I'll be damned if you don't act just like him."
His old badge. Maybe Jimbo did know it was him. Maybe this was his way of saying Michael's secret was safe with him. "Thank you," Michael said once he'd found his voice. He accepted the battered leather wallet. Did Jimbo carry that with him all the time or had he gone out of his way to get that badge to Michael? It didn't really matter.
"Take care, Knight," Jimbo said. "See you around?"
"Bet on that," Michael said. They shook hands and went their separate ways, Jim back to Stacy and Michael to Kitt.
Kitt, to whom Michael owned one hell of an explanation. And an apology. He tucked his old badge into the inner pocket of his leather jacket. "How about we go for a drive?" he asked as he opened the driver door. "There's somethin' I gotta talk to you about."
"Where to, Michael?" Kitt asked. He didn't sound upset, but Kitt wasn't always the easiest to read, even after several years of living together [several years of nearly dying together]
"Anywhere your heart desires."
"The open road it is, then," Kitt said easily.
They talked over the case as they left the city. It was a routine they hated having disrupted. The drive home or to their next destination was for decompressing. The open, empty roads of the deserts and plains were for confessions and heart-to-hearts. Out there, they could speak freely with each other. Or they could just be. Windows down, sunroofs retracted, music blaring.
Miles of empty road stretched out before them, and they'd left the last remnants of population behind hours ago. Michael turned the radio down and spoke for the first time since leaving the stadium. "Kitt, I'm sorry. I should have told you what Plan B was," he said. "It wasn't fair of me to spring that on you."
"Everything worked out fine in the end."
"That's not my point." Michael ran a hand through his hair, tugging slightly as he reached the ends of the strands. "My point is, if I'd been in your place and my partner went off without telling me my part in his plan, I'd have broken his nose. And I can't even say it was because I didn't know what Plan B was."
"When did you devise Plan B?"
"The moment Taylor said we were racing for pink slips." Michael bowed his head, unable to bring himself to look Kitt in the eye. Trusting without a second thought that his partner would take control of the car. And there was the heart of the issue: trust. "I…Kitt, look at us here. We're hauling ass down the highway at night in the middle of nowhere. I don't have my hands on the wheel, and I haven't even been paying attention to where we're going." He sighed. "I didn't think twice about takin' my eyes off the road because I trust you. It doesn't matter that you're programmed to keep me alive. You took control of the car and kept driving because you need this as much as I do.
"But I did a piss poor job of being your friend the last couple days. Seeing Stacy in the paper, then Jimbo … It kinda got to be more than I could handle," he finished softly. "Threw me off so bad, I was thinkin' that me 'n' the boys were gonna head down to the bar to celebrate nailing Taylor.
"It's not like when I lost my memory. Kitt, I knew who you were, and I … I knew you had my back. Knew you'd be there to cover my ass. I think I started to forget who I am. I just bartered you away like … like an ordinary car! Didn't even stop to think if you'd be okay with that. Gods damn it, I know how much you hate being shut down." Michael grimaced. His head was starting to hurt, a familiar ache that sympathized with the tension between his shoulders. "Then when Jimbo asked if you were my partner, I told him you were just a friend on the inside."
"You fell into a groove with Lt. Courtney, to use your words," Kitt said, not unkindly.
"Guess I did. Doesn't excuse anything."
"Excuses are not the same as an explanation. Michael, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me."
Michael hadn't really expected that. Then again, at the heart of himself, Kitt ran on computer logic. Where another human being would be yelling and crying, Kitt calmly took in this new data and reserved judgement until he had enough data to know how to proceed.
Unthinkingly, Michael fished his old badge from his pocket. He couldn't see it very well in the dark interior of the Trans-Am, but that was alright. He knew every detail of that wallet by heart. He turned it over in his hands, trying to make sense of the emotional turmoil rattling around his skull.
Finally, Kitt spoke: "You're right that I hate being shut down. I hate not knowing what you're planning. I must admit to some selfishness there, a concern for my own well-being." Michael bit his tongue. "That being said, I know you think with your heart as often as with your brain. Maybe even more so. You, like all other humans, are irrational and unpredictable." That didn't sting as much coming from Kitt. "Humans have dedicated entire fields of study to their own behavior. If you lot can't understand you, then I have no delusions about my own ability to do so." Michael shifted slightly in his seat. The hell was Kitt going with this?
"I understand your actions as well as you, Michael," Kitt continued. Michael snorted at that. "Psychologically speaking, your behavior makes sense."
"Psychologically speaking, my ass, Kitt!" Michael interrupted. "Quit deflecting and tell me what you're really tryna say."
"Very well. You're already addressed part of the issue as well as you possibly can: you don't know what you were thinking to the point that you might as well have not been thinking at all." Michael flinched as if he'd been struck. Kitt's tone wasn't exactly accusatory, but it certainly wasn't kind. "You also said that you didn't stop trusting me, but you certainly stopped talking to me. While I've grown accustomed to your 'stupid shit', to use your exact words—" Michael had had enough.
"I hurt you, and you can't figure out how to tell me," Michael interrupted flatly. He took control of the car and pulled off the road. The full moon illuminated the night beautifully. A valley, dotted by cacti and other tough desert plants, split by the silvered spill of highway as it vanished over the horizon, stretched out before them. Michael cut the engine and moved to sit on Kitt's hood, which remained cool to the touch even though they'd been driving for hours now. Michael leaned back against the windshield and looked up at the stars.
They'd stopped like this only a handful of times. Their lives were one harrowing escape after another, but very few of them cut deep enough to warrant stillness from two restless souls. Stopping like this was a time for baring their souls to each other. Michael was content to sit in silence for as long as it took Kitt to talk.
"Yes, Michael. Your actions … hurt me," Kitt said, treating the word 'hurt' with the sort of awe and reverence reserved for new discoveries. Michael supposed that for Kitt, hurt was a new discovery. That somehow, among the wiring and diodes and impossible lines of code, Kitt had developed the capacity for feeling. And he was hurt by something Michael couldn't explain because Michael didn't understand it himself.
But that confession was enough.
Michael just started talking, telling Kitt about his time on the force, about his early years with Jimbo. He hoped that, maybe, somewhere in his reminiscing, he'd find a way to help Kitt understand. Maybe he'd find a way to help himself understand.
"I try real hard not to think too much about my old life as Michael Long. You don't get a chance to say goodbye to people when you die, Kitt. You don't get to apologize or let people know you forgive 'em…" He let his head fall back against Kitt's roof and shut his eyes, tears cool on his face in the night air. "But I'm not dead. I'm not dead and I still cant apologize." The last word came out strangled by a sob that caught Michael off guard. "Can't … can't reach out to anybody. Can't heal the hurt caused by your own death." He hugged himself tightly, shaking. Gods, how he wished he had died that night sometimes. He laughed through his tears, bitter and mad at himself. "You're the one who got hurt and I'm the one cryin'!"
"You got hurt too, Michael," Kitt corrected gently. "You weren't motivated by distrust, just confusion. You didn't think things through because you couldn't." Michael swore he heard a gentle, brotherly teasing in Kitt's sympathetic voice. A voice that might as well have been a hug.
"Don't let being right so often go to your heard," Michael teased back, voice still thick with tears.
"As long as I know you trust me, Michael, I'm quite willing to go along with most of your half-baked schemes." Kitt paused for a moment. "I suppose half-baked is a little too generous. Some of your plans never see the proverbial oven before you take off."
Michael decided he'd deal with that particular taunt later, when he didn't feel like he'd just gone three rounds with a steamroller and lost all three.
"You've got me, heart and soul, Kitt. Don't you ever forget that."
