Bears Giving a @&/!*
(Thanks much Matt!- Kim)
"I let you down."
She knew the engineer was down there, could hear the muffled curses and clangs as he tried to fix the new damage she had dealt Delila. She had torn her up good this time, ground apart pipes, landing gear and main engine, crushed panels and shell and another set of pipes against the Reaver ship, wrenched apart all the new pieces that he had just installed, cracked seals that she knew that they'd only find out about when they failed in the worst possible moment. The damage was still heavy in the air; burnt and abused parts still gently reeked of the unique scent of fried wiring and over-heated metal. Rachel scowled, wrinkling her nose, and mentally sent the old ship her millionth apology.
She was fairly certain that the only thing that kept Poco working on the ship was that it was his only way off this planet. She shifted the beer and the pack of rolling papers and tiny pouch of tobacco that she had hidden away two or four planets ago for a present for him and leaned further down towards the hole.
"I'm sorry, Poco," she hollared a little louder, bracing off some random bit of metal. "Least you could do is cuss me out." It had been four days. She needed him to yell at her. He had trusted her, given her a boost of power that she hadn't felt in almost a decade from the old ship. And she had been caught off guard, too damn old anymore to have the reflexes to handle it. They had almost died. She had been fairly certain they would. Delilah had almost augered her way to the bottom the swamp. They had been too low in the sky to do anything else.
Wham. Poco hit the conduit again with the hammer. Wham. He wasn't entirely certain what the pipe was for, but it certainly felt good to bash it back into alignment. Wham. Most of the crap down here only made sense to him when the engines were running, and at the moment they were far from it. Wham. Worse, it was difficult to tell the difference between new damage and Pipe's often labyrinthine "repairs". He paused his hammering to shift the cigarette out of his mouth and wipe the sweat away from his face. Wha--"GORRAMIT!" he yelped as he hit his thumb, and his cursing escalated as his cigarette slipped down into the innards of the ship. He flinched momentarily, expecting something to explode, and when it didn't he collapsed back against the shaft. It was then that he heard a voice from above. Likely Tink, back with yet another fabricated part that might be important. He wondered briefly when the girl would notice that he was just giving her random parts to fix. There was so much broken that he wasn't entirely sure where to begin.
Poco groaned as he levered his bruised body up the small ladder. "Tink, that was entirely too quick. I'm beginning to think that you've just got a trove of spares stashed up. No way somebody can run a lathe that much and sleep--" he trailed off as he saw that is was Mama Bear at the top of the ladder. He closed his eyes and sighed, resting himself against the back of the shaft and stretching out his cramped legs to pin his weight. He had been expecting this conversation. Dreading this conversation. He was at the bottom of a shaft, banging on a pipe that likely didn't do anything, because of this conversation.
"So." he said as he pulled a beer out from the crook of her arm. "That whole crashin' into the Reavers thing was pretty stupid." He looked her dead in the eye and tried to hide that he wanted to understand her actions, but couldn't. Instead he hid behind jabs and venom, "Didn't take you for the sort to do that with a buncha kids on board."
Rachel settled down near him, taking advantage of her height to contort herself into a secured perch off random bits of structure and engine. Juggling the bag of tobacco and box of papers in her lap, she rolled him a cigarette and then held the light to it before surrendering it and laying the rest of her gift carefully on a tiny ledge nearby. She inhaled the vicarious hit of smoke flavored nicotine with a guilty pleasure before offering him an answer.
"You'd think that," she admitted flatly. "But those kids weren't Laz's. Son of a bitch made me promise on his dying bed that I'd get this ship to his boy, take care of him." Her blue eyes found his and the calm expression gave way to pain. "Why the hell did the idiot fly off like that? Captain's don't leave the ship; they send one or two of the crew if it's a decoy. The ones left behind. . .well they bend space and time to make sure that one gets clear. Even better Papa Bear, he shoulda come back, taken those kids, Tink and the doctor on the shuttle. . ." She sighed, long and heavily. "Let me pound Delilah into that Reaver ship and bring it down while them and the children got away to safety."
There was a silence and then, "I thought I could take them down; flame 'em. You gave me everything and I failed you. I don't know how to apologize. I know put you in danger down here long before the Reavers boarded honey. I guess I just trusted that you could handle yourself and survive. Prayed I guess that even at the worst, you wouldn't get eat up in 'Lilah's engines as we came down. The Reavers after you was just the piss in the vinegar of what I did."
"I don't know much 'bout Laz, but from what I can gather, he was the sort that went around pissin' folks off. I suppose the Boss got it honest, anyway." Poco accepted the cigarette carefully, shielding it from the slight foul breeze wafting out of Delilah's innards. "I don't know what anyone would say shit like that as their dyin' words. Seems quite a burden to place on someone, keeping that boy safe. He just up and jumped on that shuttle, talkin' crazy about a diversion," Poco lied blithely. Truth was that he'd brought the idea up to the Boss because he knew exactly how the man would react. Poco had sent him off to die. A quick swig of beer covered the slight shake in his hands.
After he recovered from his hasty drink, Poco sighed heavily. "Listen Mama Bear. I thought you could make it out. You usually have before. There ain't much apologizing to be done. Truthfully I don't know that anyone has ever apologized to me about anything. I suppose there's a first time for everything," he said as he looked down thoughtfully at his multi-tool. "Believe it or not," he continued, "crashing me into a ship full of Reavers barely breaks the top five of my shit list. Just know that the next time you try to pull something like that, I'm likely to bank the engines rather than burnin' 'em. You won't be doin' much rescuing at a click an hour."
An eyebrow raised. "I'll will climb down outta the cockpit and kick your hard little ass baby. If we go out, we go out flamin' and fightin' to the end. I am gonna teach you not to always run." With a wink, she neatly took the beer outta his hand and stole a swig before returning it. "We take care of one another Papa. You're the strength for me down here; I believe in myself because you believe in me. Hell, I think the only reason we got down is because I was mortified to meet you in Heaven after balls fucking that maneuver. I at least had to get us to earth." Rachel rolled her eyes. "Kinda was scared stiff that I had crunched you up in the landing. You'll never know how relieved I was when you came through the board."
Poco laughed until he coughed and wheezed, "I don't know which is better, the idea that I'm that easy to kill or that we'd be meeting in Heaven." He paused to take another pull off his beer before continuing in a more serious tone, "When you need these engines, they'll be there, but I wish I could convince this crew that sometimes running away *is* the answer. We oughtta try it sometime. Everyone around here whines so much about keepin' each other alive, but when we're usually the ones puttin' our neck on the block. A few days ago we thought there were Reavers comin' in and what did this crew do? It tried to finish drilling a well. Now I'm no expert, but I think that's one of those times when you *run*."
She couldn't help but laugh along and it felt wonderful, that release of tension, and she wiped away the tears that wandered down the pathways of her cheeks. "Well hell, when you put it that way, how can I disagree?" She inhaled deep to catch her breath and decided to comment on his slight to Lazarus. "It was his soft heart that boy got from Laz. And a profound belief that good should always try to make a difference. I don't fault Laz for what he asked of me A father would do that and he and I. . ." Her eyes shifted over his face, watching as she paused a tiny fraction of a breath, "We were close. But I will say that he had enough sense to turn tail when the odds were bad enough."
With a little groan, she shifted her position to move a knob out of the small of her back and reset her legs. "Don't know if you'll ever convince them to run away honey. Ain't in them. And as for keepin' each other alive. She snorted hard and tossed her head. "They are all trying to do the right thing. Help their fellow man, not each other. They feel like they're invincible because they're doing the right thing." Her face fell a little and she leaned closer. "I guess our problem is that we want to save them and ourselves from the fight that they won't walk away from. Sometimes right isn't enough, is it?"
Poco kept his eyes lidded and took a slow drag of his cigarette. "It is true that I've never seen doin' the right thing stop a bullet. Well, I guess that's not quite true. I've seen people doin' the right thing stop a bullet. Do you think they'll stop if one of 'em dies? Or maybe if they get a bunch of deaf settlers killed? What good is that heart full of goodness and righteousness if it's ripped out and eaten by Reavers?" Poco leaned back with an exasperated sigh. "Mama Bear this crew has been shot at, crash landed, and brushed with Reavers more than I was a gorram pirate. If they can't learn that not everything is worth dyin' for, one of us is going to do just that."
Rachel paled at his words, her lips pressing hard until there was no blood in them. "That was mine, Poco," she countered evenly although a minute shiver ran over her. "They didn't do that. I got those settlers killed." She gnawed on her already abused lips, pulling the lower one through her teeth. "If I had let the boy go, every one of us woulda been fine. Maybe I'm the problem, not them."
"Maybe. That's my point Mama Bear. You all keep givin' a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck. Take this whole Reaver thing, for example. I was all for warnin' the settlers. And I was all for exposin' that Barnum fella for a fraud. But why the hell did we have to wait so long before we rabbited? For a well? Wells don't bring folk back to life. To level with ya, at least going back to save the Boss makes some sort of logical sense. Sittin' around on our thumbs with Reavers inbound was stupid. Buzzin' a Reaver ship? Also stupid, but at least you had a decent reason." After days of struggling over whether or not he could trust these people, Poco finally felt himself back on solid ground. If he was going to trust them, he had to be able to also trust that they weren't going to be constantly trying to get themselves killed.
She snorted. "I will always give a fuck about my crewmates honey, especially my grizzly bear of an engineer." Rising to her feet, she leaned down to cup his chin in her hand and lifted his face up. "Thanks for listening and talking. Can't say I feel much better about what I did, what happened, but I can't argue with any of your logic. But that's what gets you and me in trouble." Deftly, she plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and kissed him quickly before re-inserting the smoking bit of leaf and paper back home. "That'll be the death of you, you know. Although I must admit that I truly appreciate its ability to cover up the acrid burnt mess of metal and wires that I created down here for you."
He looked up at her briefly and them set himself for going back down the ladder. "Maybe they will. I started 'em at a time in my life where I figured I'd be lucky if the cigs killed me. Seems like that's still the case, most days." He started easing himself back down into the ruin of wiring and piping, his mind already switching over to the endless list of repairs. As was often the case when the technical side of his brain took over, he dropped his guard for just a moment. "It's good to know that you're up there," he muttered. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he tried to pull them back, but it was too late. Instead he grumbled some curses and hoped that the old pilot hadn't heard.
Her steps only paused a minute fraction, her lips sliding into a slow smile as she bowed her head and made her way back to her own cave.
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