Editing Keeping Faith

<span style="color:#800000">'''Andy took some time out of a busy evening to do this with me and I'm really glad he did. Like Joshua, he manages to say the right thing at the right time and make the extraneous bits fall away. Thanks Andy!'''--Maer</span><br> <br> <br>


'''Tuesday, 08 Feb 2524'''<br>
'''Arkship ''Amenoukihashi'''''<br>
'''Somewhere in the Black'''<br>
'''Time unknown'''<br><br>


The container was dark and everything was quiet. The crew slept on, huddled together for warmth. No one was keeping watch and that bothered me. It wasn't like us to do this in hostile territory. Anna and her men were still out there and by now they'd be looking for us. Scrubbing the sleep from my eyes I rose awkwardly in my armor and took a turn around the perimeter to see if everything was secure. My footfalls made no sound and I rubbed my ears, wondering if the two guards we'd killed by explosion had affected my hearing somehow. It wouldn't surprise me if it had. We'd all taken damage. Fatigue made me stumble. The bulkhead caught me before I could fall far. I pushed off and started for the opposite side of the container, skirting a row of shelves that held farm equipment. Three steps later, my foot skidded on something wet.<br><br>

In the dim emergency lighting, the puddle under my boots glowed impossibly red, trailing into the gloom between the rows. Copper struck my nose then, mixed with the stench of rotting meat, and bile hit my throat. Gagging it down, I followed the trail into the dark. It was pitch black but somehow I could still see. Red dripped everywhere, coming off the shelves and the equipment at a steady clip, and my foot hit something soft. I looked down and saw Joshua staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his throat gaping open from the slash that ran from ear to ear.<br><br>

"''Rinushka''."<br><br>

Nikolai? I spun, tripped, and fell. Joshua's body was still warm and cushioned me, accommodating even in death. No, this can't be happening ... I struggled to get up, hampered by my armor, and Nikolai advanced one slow deliberate step after another blocking my only exit. A knife gleamed in his hand, slick with Joshua's blood, and frozen I watched the blade rise for the killing blow.<br><br>

"Time to die."<br><br>

There was nothing left of Nikolai now. The tortured soul who begged me to end him was gone. In his place was the monster he feared, the thing the Alliance had made him. It was pitch dark and yet I could still see every line in his face, every nuance of his expression, and I knew without having to look that I was the only one left alive. He'd killed us as we'd slept and had saved me for last. I was dead if I didn't move.<br><br>

Despair for Joshua drowned me. Fear gave me the strength to swim. I lashed out with a booted heel and took out Nikolai's knee. He landed hard against the shelves and boxes rained down on his shaved head. Using the opening it gave me, I scrambled up and ran past him. His slash went wild and scored nothing but air.<br><br>

I ran. I ran as hard and fast as I could for my pack where I'd left my rifle, but Nikolai had already field stripped it to pieces. The yellow glow strip on the container door beckoned to my left and I realized I had to get out. I managed only a step before Nikolai grabbed me from behind and threw me down. Dragging me by my hair, he pulled me across the deck and opened the door and yelled.<br><br>

"Pakhan! They're here! They're here—!"<br><br>

From a distance I heard the drum of boots, the whine of a grav sled, and no matter how much I twisted and squirmed in Nikolai's grasp, he held me fast at arm's length and grinned at me.<br><br>

"Time to die, little sister."<br><br>

''No, no, no, no—''<br><br>

"Nyyyyyyet!" I screamed, terrified and defiant, as Nikolai's knife slashed my throat to ribbons.<br><br>

---<br><br>

"Shhhshhhhshhhh, love..." Joshua semi-frantically attempted to get his wife to stop squirming and screaming in his arms. It was clear she had experiencing some sort of horrific nightmare. If Joshua had to guess, it would be something involving her brother. But really, considering the events of the last few days, who could say? So many things to choose from.<br><br>

He gently clapped a hand over her mouth, making sure to whisper soothing noises in her ear the entire time. While he could understand having nightmares, bringing Anna's soldiers on them because of her screaming would be an ironical nightmare in its own class.<br><br>

---<br><br>

A hand clapped over my mouth, holding my screams in, cutting off my air. I couldn't breathe and I was back on ''Janus'' in the storage locker with the Lieutenant. I fought him but I was already throat-slashed and bleeding out. ''God, am I in Hell?'' Opening my eyes the locker was full of ghosts--my crew, my family, Nikolai, Mike, Joshua ... Pressing closer, crushing the last of the air out of me. The blood in my head went thin, my lungs went to fire, and still I fought. If the Devil was coming for me, by God I would make him work for it. <br><br>

---<br><br>

"Rina, gorram hell, please, it's Joshua." He was afraid to slap her awake, because her fight reflex seemed to already be activated. So he did the only thing he could think of. He removed his hand from her mouth and quickly pressed his mouth to hers in an intense kiss.<br><br>

''I just hope she doesn't bite me''.<br><br>

---<br><br>

Warmth. Love. Life. A voice called my name. It was a rope thrown to a drowning man. I grabbed it and I surfaced to Joshua's kiss. Relief nearly sent me under again but my husband would not be denied. I rallied and buoyed by his touch, his very breath, I returned his kiss measure for measure.<br><br>

---<br><br>

As Joshua kissed her, he felt her relax her body and lean into him and he allowed a quiet internal sigh of relief pass through him. Then he let the kiss go and looked into Rina's eyes. "Everything's going to be okay, love. Everything is going to be okay. You're here with me."<br><br>

---<br><br>

"You're alive..." To my shame a mewling whimper got past my control and I pulled Joshua into a hard embrace. Like his kiss, he was life and love made manifest, and my arms tightened around him, trying to draw as much of him into me as I could. I was awake and no longer dreaming but for one intense impossible moment, I expected to wake up to find my husband and crew dead on the deck and Nikolai coming for me again.<br><br>

---<br><br>

"Must have been a bad one." Joshua rarely saw Rina lose her tight grip on herself and when she did, it was usually due to very strong emotions. There was a lot of that swirling around, he thought. He held her tight against him and quietly said, "Do you want to talk about it for a little while before we try and get back to sleep? Purge it from your system."<br><br>

---<br><br>

''No.''<br><br>

I bit my lip and tasted copper, which only brought the dream thudding back. I shoved the terror down and got a grip. "Yes. Just ..." I snuggled closer, craving the comfort of his touch, unable to find the words to express what I felt.<br><br>

''Enough wallowing. Suck it up''.<br><br>

"Nikolai. He ..." I faltered and saw Joshua's ruined throat gaping wide. I clutched my husband and breathed him in deep. I had never smelled sweeter or loved him more. "He's afraid, Joshua. He's got a monster inside and it's eating him alive. He ... says the pain isn't enough. He can't hold back the beast with it anymore. D'you—do you know what he asked me?"<br><br>

---<br><br>

Joshua had some idea what the young Russian might asked from his sister, but Joshua shook his head anyway and let Rina tell him. "No, what did he ask?"<br><br>

---<br><br>

My throat closed up around the words, each syllable a razor, and I forced them out.<br><br>

"He begged me to kill him," I said thickly. "To kill him before he killed us. That was what I was dreaming. I'd waited too long to come home and he ... You ..." Of their own volition, my hands sought my husband's neck, marveling to find him vital and intact. "I'd never seen so much blood ..."<br><br>

---<br><br>

Joshua's first instinct was to joke that he was too awesome to be killed, but he quickly decided to rein it in and go a different direction. "I'm not dead, it was just a dream." He grasped her hands and squeezed softly for a couple quiet minutes. Then he asked the hard question.<br><br>

"Do you feel guilty that you didn't kill him or that you couldn't?"<br><br>

---<br><br>

It was too close to the truth and revulsion made me kick away from him. I scrambled up from the pallet we shared, my skin crawling as the action matched my dream, and I put some distance between us.<br><br>

"Kill him? Don't you ''understand?'' He's already ''dead.'' It's just taking him this long to ''die''. And it's my fault. ''My fault'', Joshua. Because I was ... was ... I hung my family out to dry so I could run around the Verse like a spoiled irresponsible bitch. If I'd come home sooner, I could have caught Nikolai before his tongue could slip and get him in trouble."<br><br>

And that breached the dam I'd built and everything I'd held back since Sihnon surged forth. I clapped both hands over my mouth to keep it all inside and hunched over my gut as I struggled to shut it all down. An errant thought came to me then: had Anna known Nikolai was aboard? Would she have presented him to me while she'd tortured me? Short of butchering my husband alive before my eyes, she could not have devised a crueler method to break me.<br><br>

---<br><br>

Joshua shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. It was Anna's fault. You have to stay focused on that." Rina was always all too willing to take all the torture and blame upon herself. He supposed it was the Russian in her, but right now he needed her not to be focusing on the Russian inside, but the evil Russian stealing their ark.<br><br>

"You can't take responsibility for this because that only invalidates your brother's life. If he couldn't live his life without you around, what good was it? No, Rina, he just ran into more bad luck than anyone should have to deal with. It stinks but the only person to blame is the evil bitch who is trying to kill us."<br><br>

And obviously, he thought, she didn't really consider Nikolai dead. If she had thought he was dead, the idea of killing him might not have hit her so hard. Joshua wondered if he could kill someone if they requested it. If it seemed they were a danger to themselves and others. Joshua had never killed anyone before. But he might in that situation...if Rina asked him to.<br><br>

---<br><br>

There comes a point when grabbing blame is nothing but false pride, self-destructive and selfish. Joshua had the right of it. ''I couldn't control what Kolya said when I still lived with him and my family. Why the hell do I think I could have made a difference if I'd stayed?'' So common sense whispered witheringly in my head and it did much to dispel the lingering effects of my nightmare. Still, tendrils of guilt remained as I straightened and sighed.<br><br>

"You're right, of course." I put my back to the wall and leaned on it, shoved my hands deep into my pockets, and looked at my husband through my lashes. "You ever get tired of it?"<br><br>

---<br><br>

"Nope." Joshua had a half smirk cross his face briefly before it became an honest smile. "I'm wrong all the time. Just not very much when it comes to the things that are important to me, like you."<br><br>

He crawled over next to his wife and sat down. "So, we're going to leave Nikolai here and hope for the best then." It was less a question than a confirmation.<br><br>

---

"I just ''found'' him, Joshua. How can I ''leave'' him? Leave him like ... like ''this?'' I can't just leave him to die alone amongst the enemy, even if I can't kill him outright. And completely aside from my own feelings on the matter, the fact remains that he'll self-destruct when he dies. Even if I could kill him as he asked, the resulting explosion would kill us all. Where's the good in that?"<br><br>

But even as I said it, another thought hit me, and it made whatever else I would have said unimportant. I screwed my eyes shut and tried not to consider it, but it refused to go away: ''Give Nikolai a chance to choose his fate on his own terms. He's a walking bomb. What if the bomb decides when to explode, instead of the bomb maker?'' A memory surfaced then, something I'd glimpsed on Mike's face during the war. I didn't recognize it at the time but now I understood. He'd been weighing his assets, deciding how best to utilize the men he had as weapons, to deploy them in war. Such objectivity did not come without a price and I could feel the coin changing hands. I opened my eyes and looked at my husband, and wondered if my expression was as bleak as I felt.<br><br>

"There is a way to end it."<br><br>

---<br><br>

Joshua made the logical connection and shook his head. "If you're thinking about using him as a weapon, I'd say no. Don't validate what they did to him. I would think he would rather die at your hands with family near him than to die alone surrounded by the enemy. And what if they captured him and put him back into bondage again?"<br><br>

He shook his head in negation again. "I understand where you're coming from, but it just feels wrong, Rina."<br><br>

---<br><br>

For the second time that night, relief made me melt. ''Trust Joshua to say the right thing at the right time''. No longer paralyzed by guilt and conundrum, I was finally able to think outside the box.<br><br>

"Then we'll have to find a way to deactivate the bomb. Disable the triggering device so he won't explode when he dies. How do we do that?"<br><br>

---<br><br>

He ran his hand through her hair. "Worry about that in the morning, Rina. You're still healing from the bomb blasts from earlier and it's late and you're tired. When our brains are fresh, we'll be able to take a better crack at it. Or rather, you will, as bombs are your thing, not mine." As if on cue, he stifled a yawn and then kissed her on her forehead. "But I promise that things will work out. I have faith."<br><br>

---<br><br>

"And I have you. Something I still can't believe I deserve. Especially at times like this." I leaned into his hand as he ran it through my hair. Like his knack of knowing what to say, he knew how to touch me and I could feel myself relax. I slipped my arm around his waist and snuggled closer. "Have I told you how much I love you?"

I didn't wait for him to tell me. I saw it in his eyes and I answered it. Hemmed in on all sides by those who wanted us dead, with my brother dying by inches mere yards away, I affirmed my husband's faith in the positive outcome and as long as he held me, I too could believe it.<br><br><br>





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