Memento More-y
Chapter 3
Two Plain Bagels
His arm hurts. Really hurts, but it's just a bug bite compared to being a fencing partner with a white knight.
Despite the sting he gets every time he cranks the wheel to take a corner, that's not what's keeping him awake. He's sort of preoccupied with the unbalanced gun in her hand. It's boosting his adrenaline through his blood loss, even though, if he wanted to, he could grab that sucker right out of her hand.
He still has one good arm.
But that's an action out of the question for right now because he needs to win her trust, and he never thought the tables would be this flipped. Somehow he's got to get her to believe him and the team.
He's the worst guy for the job.
But he's the only one here.
Why couldn't Jackson know how to drive a motorcycle?
"Can't you drive any faster?" For a second, through the headache pounding to life in his ears, she sounds like old Vala—the one who took his bagel every day for two weeks until he called her on it and she answered, 'can't you just buy two?'
"Not unless you want me to roll the car." He sounds like his grumpy ol' self because in the last fifteen minutes he's commandeered a motorcycle, saw her car flip like a coin toss, and get shot in the arm—he thinks. It's a lot. Almost braked the damn bike in the middle of the freeway until she crawled out of the wreckage, and he thinks he looked small, not giddy and happy with that bright grin while she picks the pockets of whatever privates she passes. Just—her arms pulled closer to her body, and when she saw the gun, he actually saw her fear.
"Do I know how to drive one of these vehicles?"
"What?"
Slows at a light, third in line to make a left-hand turn and how the hell does she have a master plan on where she wants to be evacuated to if she doesn't have her memories—but then again this is Vala, and her unprecedented ability to cover her own ass might just be engrained in her genetics.
"You said you know me, so am I capable of driving one of these?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Not really an appropriate time to tell the woman who thinks she's just a waitress that she's an alien and a criminal and wanted by the Lucien Alliance and a handful of bounty hunters. It's why she came to them, but not why she came back to them. He back burners that conversation when his head is a little clearer and not so hard to hold up. "Because there's no way in hell we'd let you get close to driving a car."
"That's rude."
"No, it's true."
"Just because it may be the truth in the context of your opinion, doesn't mean it wasn't rude."
He slides her a half grin because he can still see the real her, buried underneath all the makeup that she somehow managed to get in two weeks, under her outer worry, meshed with her whole survival of the fittest thing that smacked her in with his team. "You're really not faking this, are you?"
"Why would I fake this?"
"I dunno, Princess, you fake a lot of things."
"Is that innuendo?"
Honestly, he can sense her rebuttal before he even finished the sentence and this one's on him, but he has started to enjoy their little debates lately, started to jog less and play more basketball, started trusting her with weapons other than a zat because he knows now that she's not going to plant one in his head and steal his car.
Started bringing a second bagel.
"Not innuendo so much as a set up to see if you'd take the bait."
"Is that an innuendo?"
"Not everything is an innuendo."
"Actually, you'll find that most things are."
"Depends on who you're with, I guess."
"Just drive."
Just like that their debate is over and the gun is raised again. They sit in silence, with only her booming out commands of where to turn and what streets to take.
"For someone with amnesia, you sure know a lot." He cuts the wheel taking the right she asked for, and now they're entering the bad part of downtown, the part that always gets left out of the community restructuring program.
"I lost my memory, not my mind."
"Meaning?"
"I'm not an idiot. I still retain the main—"
"Then you know we stole a car, and that the police are looking for you." As if to prove his point, they drift slowly by a parked police cruiser. He reaches to the side and gently lowers her gun.
"I also know that those people who took me are—"
His hands fall lax on the wheel, and for a second, he thinks it might be on purpose, but as he swerves in the lines, her gun perks up and she jabs a boney finger into his side. "Hey."
"Sorry." Then he realizes his vision's getting a little blurry, and he tries to blink it away, but the car swerves again. "I am bleeding here."
"Yes, and if the first thing I fully remember wasn't running through a warehouse during an active gunfight, jumping through a glass door and watching said warehouse explode I might extend a little more—"
"Look, Vala." Swats at her to quiet her, just like when they go off-world and it's late at night and she bolts up, wrapped in her sleeping bag and terrified at something. "Wherever we're going, it better be close because I'm not gonna be standing for much longer."
There's a beat, and the sound of the car tires over lumpy pavement.
"Could you walk?"
"Briefly."
"Good." She smacks at his arm, the gun lowered to fit into the front of her jeans. "Pull over here."