98 One More Left

Brutus really stood there and sifted through two days' worth of raw footage like a golem waiting for the breath of life. I almost felt bad because I could have just given him the abridged version, but I had almost no energy left, but he wouldn't believe half the shit if he didn't see it himself. It went without saying that he didn't hold me in high regard.

I watched him carefully but quickly realized that I wouldn't quite have the satisfaction of seeing the look on his face. However, the furtive glances he cast in my direction and the surprised rumbling he kept making were good enough.

The numbing agent kept the pain at bay for my whole body, but I was still shuddering from the adrenaline that had been pumped through my system; so much so that I might as well have been convulsing. I was barely able to strap my useless arm against my torso. I didn't have the tools to make a sling, so it was just getting wrapped into place.

Which meant I wouldn't be able to use my computer. Fine. I'd lived my whole life without a HUD overlay. The visual clutter was something I still hadn't quite gotten used to. When I was done, I put away the medkit.

There was going to be no using my arm for a while. Not until I could see an actual doctor or something similar. Tendons and muscles had been severed, nerves wrecked . . . I didn't even need my mask to know all that. I'd seen the giant hole long enough to be able to make that guess.

"Why do you shake so violently?" Brutus asked out of the blue, startling me.

I wasn't stupid enough to read it as concern. Maybe alarm, like he thought I might explode. "It's . . . a side-effect of a hormone released as a survival mechanism. This is . . . normal. My body has undergone severe trauma and doesn't know what to do," I explained. I was making up half of it, but it was an educated guess based on my own knowledge and experience.

He made a rumbling sound in his chest and said, "You are indeed a mess right now."

I didn't even have the energy to feel any type of way about that response. I wished I could do something other than sit propped against a wall, half-falling over, but I didn't. The tremors were taking a lot of my energy, too.

"How badly am I hurt?" I asked him after a second. I had a general idea; I probably had a few cracked if not broken ribs: I still couldn't catch my breath. I had no way of knowing what kind of damage had been done by prolonged exposure to the atmosphere, either, and I could only hope it wasn't going make me keel over.

Brutus looked down at me again, still holding my mask in his hand as he transferred the data. Then, after a brief pause, he said, "I am surprised you are still alive."

A retort died on my tongue as he continued speaking.

"I do not just mean your wounds" he grunted, looking away from me again. He had slowed and dumbed down his speech considerably for me. I might have appreciated it if I didn't know he was being condescending. "You seem generally incapable of making sound decisions."

I frowned. There were a number of things he could have meant. "What decisions do you think I should have made?"

"Run. Hide. Wait for rescue."

My face burned. "I did not know if rescue would even come and I won all of my fights."

Brutus tossed my mask at me as if he didn't want to get closer. It landed just out of arm's reach. "Barely, with the help of a serf. They do not even fight for themselves, so I am not sure how you managed to get them to fight for you."

"|Must be my animal magnetism|," I muttered in English.

"I do, however, recognize that for your stupidity and luck, you do struggle brilliantly. Your ruthlessness was commendable," he admitted. Even sounded begrudgingly impressed.

Taken aback, I asked, "You are not going to lecture me about honor?"

He snorted. "Sha'ktil-ar told you to win. He did not tell you to die honorably."

Perhaps I had been more affected than I'd thought by my enemies' outrage at my tactics. I'd told myself that they were all just a hive of scum and villainy, that I didn't have to give them even an iota of thought. But after hearing the same thing over and over . . . I had tried not to think about it, but somewhere deep down I'd been afraid of what would happen when this was over. What sort of consequences I would have to face.

I knew what Wolf had told me, but when faced with the carnage, would he have still thought the same? Would he have been disgusted with how I'd conducted myself? They put such high regard in their code of honor, and in the back of my mind, I'd always wondered if I was going too far in my tactics.

And now Brutus, of all people, this beastly alien man who thought nothing of me, was praising me. Telling me that, while I had perhaps not made the decision he deemed correct, I had at least made the best of my shitty situation.

For some reason, that little bit of validation was enough to unravel me.

"I was just . . . I was . . . It . . ." The words failed me. My lip quivered. The first few tears slipped down my cheeks and I doubled over and put my arm over my face.

No, I couldn't cry. Not in front of Brutus.

Once they started, though, I couldn't stop them. Everything hit me all at once and I wept. Everything that I had been building up and suppressing came bubbling up to the surface with this one small act of begrudging kindness. All the fear, all the pain, all the anxiety, the relief . . . It swept over me; the deluge from a broken damn.

Brutus's arms dropped to his sides and he stared at me, leaning away slightly. He was silent, unsure of what to do, for an uncomfortable amount of time as I tried to get control of myself, but I had no means of self-soothing. This was the sort of torrent that could only be quelled once it had run its full course.

I hated myself for it, for being vulnerable in front of Brutus. The whole time I'd been so scared. Scared about what they were going to do to me—so much so that I'd dissociated and resigned to letting myself die over trying to withstand torture.

To my surprise, Brutus approached. I hurried to wipe my face on my forearms and the heels of my palms so I could look at him without a gross-cry face, but he suddenly put his hand on my head. It weighed me down to the point of crossing the line of uncomfortable and into painful. He just left it there, too, didn't pat me or offer any other form of affection.

Not that I really expected him, too. This was more attention than I ever thought he would have deigned to attempt.

"You humans," he sighed, the words a deep grumble from his chest. "Calm down now."

It was, strangely enough, helpful. It reminded me that I wasn't alone anymore. Everything was going to be okay now. Brutus had come. We'd gotten the message out and I had survived long enough for help to arrive and . . . everything was going to be okay. I didn't have to keep up the facade.

Finally, I could breathe again

Curling up into myself, I hugged my knees and made myself small. I felt small. Still, I nodded my head and let my sobs slowly subside. Hiccuping, sniffling, and taking deep breaths. When I was a little calmer, Brutus removed his hand and went back to giving me a wide berth.

"Why did you help me instead of going to find Wolf?" I asked him, trying to fill the awkward silence left in the wake of my breakdown.

"Despite disagreeing with his desire to house you, I value our camaraderie and would not jeopardize it by negligently allowing you to be killed due to my own bias," he replied. The wordiness of his confession made it hard for me to follow. What I got from it was that he thought Wolf would be pissed if he had let me die.

"You do not think he would have forgiven you?"

"Perhaps eventually," said Brutus, "but my patience is limited and I do not know how long it would take, nor would I want to apologize, so I just avoided the scenario altogether."

I wanted to feel touched that Wolf thought so highly of me and that Brutus cared a lot about their friendship, but I couldn't. All I could think about was the fact that Brutus had all that fucking time to think about saving me when he could have just . . . done it? I didn't think it was possible to be grateful and infuriated at the same time, but there I was.

It all culminated into the only response I could give him; "Thanks . . . I guess."

"In any case, you no longer need to continue your pitiable but brilliant struggling. I am here now and I will finish this for you," he said, messing with his computer. "I would suggest you hide somewhere unless you think you can make it back to Sha'ktil-ar's ship."

With a bit of grunting and groaning, I shifted to pick up my mask and stood up. I clipped it to my hip since it was useless if I couldn't use my computer.

"I want to come."

"You will get in my way," he scoffed without missing a beat.

"I . . . I know I am not well enough to help, but . . . I want to be there," I said. Unable to put my feelings into Yaut'ja, I switched to English. "|I wanna be there to see you beat the shit out of that asshole, and I want to be there for Wolf.|"

Brutus regarded me for a moment. "He would not require comforting."

Hot shame flashed down the back of my neck and I squeezed my fingers into a fist. I didn't say it out loud, but I didn't want to wait on the ship alone, not knowing what was going on. Although I knew Wolf wouldn't need me to comfort him, I was desperate to be comforted myself. I wanted to see that he was okay, I wanted him to see that I was okay, and I didn't want to wait another second for it.

Thankfully, Brutus didn't press for an explanation. He simply said, "Though your track record with decision making leads me to believe that you would follow anyway, and I understand your desire for catharsis. Stay out of sight and stay out of my way."

Though I didn't know what "catharsis" was in Yaut'ja, I guessed the meaning through his context.

He didn't wait for a response, merely activated his camouflage and stomped off. I frowned but wasn't surprised. Of course, he wasn't going to make this easy. I already had a general idea of where we might be headed, though, and he wasn't hiding his footfalls. Resigned, I peeled away some of the bandages on my arm so I could punch in the intimately familiar sequence that turned on my own cloaking technology, and I quietly followed several yards behind Brutus.