Cyborg 009 Fan Fiction ❯ Of Moths and Flames ❯ Where's the Fire? ( Chapter 3 )

(*Author's note: I have some closing notes on the bottom about this story to explain a few things, so, if you are interested at all, take a look when you get down there.

So, without further adieu- my Final Chapter! *)

-Of Moths and Flames-

Chapter 3: Where's the Fire?

About six minutes later they were, slowly but surely, moving. Cathy was clinging to Jet's back and Jet used one hand to keep her there and his other to support himself. Leaning heavily against the wall, he pushed himself forward and each step he took was punctuated by a grunt or a pained hiss. She could hear the effort that he was making to keep those sounds to himself (God forbid he admit how much pain he's in!) but there was nothing that he could do to hide the shudders that were running through him. From her position, Cathy could feel them quite well.

She hadn't wanted to do it this way. Cyborg or not, Jet shouldn't be walking around on a broken leg at all- never mind with a person hanging on his back. How much good would it do if he collapsed from shock? Never mind how much extra damage it would do. When she had mentioned these things, he'd assured her that he wasn't that badly hurt, but considering how anxious he had been before to have her leave him behind . . .

In the end, there had been no choice. Her limbs had become leaden and couldn't be persuaded to try anything as complicated as walking. And the one time she had pushed herself up to her feet . . . well, it hadn't been fun and she couldn't make herself stay there long enough to convince Jet that he didn't have to carry her. Of course, by the time she'd fallen, she'd felt too sick to argue with him and Jet had won by default.

Although, she was sure that he wasn't too happy about 'winning' now.

He stopped for a moment, turning his head to look back at her. While his smile was probably meant to be reassuring, the obvious pain behind it did nothing but add to her worries. "We're almost there. Keep holding on, okay?"

(Not like I'm going to let go.) She nodded and wished she could say something encouraging with out sounding like she was nagging him. He didn't seem to be expecting anything more than a nod anyway. He just looked forward and started moving again.

She craned her head so she could see where they were going. A stair well- and not just any stair well. She knew from the safety lecture she had gotten when she first came to work here, that those stairs led directly up to the roof. It was funny: there seemed to be a lot more stairs now than when she had looked at it all that time ago.

As he started up the stairs, she could tell that this was taking a lot out of him. His movements were slower, jerky and he wasn't even trying to hide the sounds his was making anymore. In a sick sort of way, it was almost comforting. Jet might not need as much oxygen as she did and he might be able to fly and he might have a lot of robotic parts, but he was still human enough to feel pain.

And human enough to feel other things too. Concern, pride, bravery, fondness. Feelings that she hadn't thought he had when she'd thought he was completely human.

She wondered, as they made their slow progress up the stairs, how she could have pegged Jet so wrongly. She prided herself on her ability to know about people: what drove them, why they acted the way they did. The fact that her picture of Jet was so distorted was upsetting and she couldn't figure out why Jet had proved to be such an enigma.

Actually, if she was going to be honest with herself, she already knew the answer and it had nothing to do with Jet at all. When her husband had left her and Jimmy to fend for themselves, she'd been crushed. Despite all of his faults, she had honestly loved the man and he had just thrown it all away. She'd gone through a brief (a very brief) time when she had blamed herself for his leaving. Was there something more she could have done? Had she been too demanding? What? Why?

After she'd gotten over that, there had been nothing left but anger and bitterness, and since she hated pity, she'd dived right into anger. And there she had stayed. Ever since then, her temper had shortened dangerously and things that she would have found merely frustrating or annoying as little as a month ago made her furious. Jet's behavior would have frustrated her a month ago.

Unfortunately, she had only come to know him recently and as a result . . . he hadn't been given a chance at all.

Like when he'd brought her son to the coffee shop today (It seems so long ago now!). A month ago, the fact that Jet had stood idly by while her son go into a fight would have only annoyed her because she would have realized that the reason he hadn't stepped in was that Jet probably had been raised to see nothing wrong with a boy getting into fights. She would have seen that he was barely an adult himself and, while she still would have given him a good talking to, she wouldn't have been nearly as hard on him as she had been today.

But since it had happened today, she had thought the reason Jet hadn't stepped in was because he didn't care if Jimmy got hurt. That he didn't care what happened. She'd gotten it into her head that Jet was nothing but a delinquent but she had still expected him to act like an adult. That was why she had really let him have it.

Now that she was actually thinking about it, she realized that there had been many little signals that Jet was more than he appeared. Sadly, she'd been too preoccupied with her own problems to take the time to figure out a complicated person and she had missed them, deciding to simplify him instead until he bore little resemblance to what he really was.

But she was determined not to make that same mistake twice. If they got out of here, she was going to make a real effort to see what was under all those layers. She'd seen quite a bit tonight and she realized that Jet was definitely someone worth really getting to know. Maybe even-

Suddenly, Jet's leg buckled and he screamed.

She'd been afraid something like this would happen. "Jet, come on!" If he fell now, there'd be no way that she'd be able to help him back up or drag him the rest of the way - at this point, she didn't know if she could drag herself out.

Jet was leaning heavily against the wall, painting in obvious agony. He was still standing, but judging by the tremors running through him, he wouldn't stay that way much longer. She looked ahead and saw that all that stood between dying here and living on the roof were a few stairs, a small section of floor and a closed door. Surely if there was a God, as Cathy sometimes liked to think there probably was, He would not let them come so far just so they could fail when they were so close.

Before she could fully register what was happening, Jet made a sound that could only be described as a battle cry and they were moving very fast. He practically ran up the stairs and across the floor. He slammed into the door with enough force to rip the bolt that kept it closed and pop it open.

Either Jet had jumped through the door or had tripped over his feet on his last step because they landed roughly on the roof. Cathy was at once glad and concerned that Jet was the one on the bottom. When he tried to push himself up to his knees, she fell off his back in a slightly less than graceful fashion.

Feeling her strength returning as she was finally able to breathe, she helped Jet turn himself over so he could sit and get his wound out of the dirt. He settled back with a groan and he was still panting. The total lack of expression on his face was unsettling and, for a moment, she feared that he'd gone into shock after all.

To her relief, he cracked a smile. It was pained and small, but genuine. "Finally! We're here."

She looked down at his leg and felt some of her relief slip away. (That can't be good.) It looked even worse than it did before and she wondered how he was going to fix it - it was a cinch to see that going to a hospital wouldn't help him very much. She wondered if it even could be fixed. Her stomach sank at the thought. "Your leg . . . Will it ever work again?"

Jet looked away from the sky and focused his attention on her. He was still smiling and his nonchalance had come back to him. "Hmph. I guess Jimmy didn't tell you everything." Sitting up a little straighter, he continued. "002 is one indestructible cyborg."

It was hard to tell from his tone if he was joking or not and, for a moment, Cathy just stared at him. Considering the condition of his leg, how could he say something so ridiculous? Then she remembered Jimmy's cyborg stories. 002 had featured prominently in all the stories- the hero. 'Indestructible and all the women and children love him.' So if Jet was 002 . . . Well, someone had a high opinion of himself.

Remembering all the (most likely) inflated heroics of his stories, combining it with the actual heroics that she'd seen tonight, adding a dash of his ridiculous statement, baking it all in the oven of "Thank God we're still alive!," and lightly seasoning it with the fact that she finally had enough air, she couldn't stop the chuckles that escaped her. She also couldn't stop those chuckles from becoming full fledged laughs- although, really, she wasn't trying too hard. It felt good to laugh. She only hoped, as she continued to laugh, that she didn't wound Jet's manly pride too badly.

It seemed to be a moot point as Jet's low chuckles and deep laughter joined her own. Cathy didn't know what he was laughing about; but she was glad to hear it anyway. She couldn't ever remember hearing him actually laugh before and she liked the sound of it. She hoped that she'd be able to hear it more often.

They were both laughing so loudly that she didn't notice the helicopter until it was right on top of them and shining a blinding light into her face. They both stopped laughing abruptly and Cathy helped Jet to his feet.

As she looked at the helicopter, she was struck by the urge to say something. There was so much that she wanted to say. She wanted to thank him for saving her and yell at him for risking his life. She wanted to apologize for selling him short. She wanted to tell him that she wanted to get to know him. She wanted-

Deciding to wait until she had time to sort through all her thoughts and feelings about everything before she talked about them, she didn't say any of those things. "We made it out safely."

It sounded horribly flat to her ears after all they'd been through tonight, but Jet seemed to take it in stride. "We did."

With Jet's arm over her shoulder and her arm around his waist, Cathy helped him limp over to the helicopter. While she mainly worried about what they were going to say to the paramedics about Jet's leg, other parts of her mind were busy wondering whether things would change between them or if things would go back to the way they used to be. She knew that, if nothing else, she wouldn't be able to look at Jet the same way she did before tonight.

Her feelings were still confused, but there was a definite warmth for Jet that hadn't been there before. She hoped, as the paramedics loaded the both of them into the helicopter, that she'd never lose it.

And that she'd be able to share it with him someday.

THE END

(*End Notes: The first thing I'd like to mention is the real lack of shippy-ness when I promised some in Chapter 1. I tried, I really tried and when I had it written out, it certainly looked shippy.

But, when I typed it out, I realized that real people do not just fall in love like that. A person like I pictured Cathy to be certainly wouldn't. I know that there is such thing as love at first sight (or, rather, lust), but that hardly applied to this story- they already knew each other and Cathy hated him. I think that you'd be hard pressed to find a situation, outside of a cheesy romance novel, where someone goes from hating someone right to loving someone with nothing else in between. There is such thing as "heat of the moment" and that certainly could have applied, but the darn characters wouldn't cooperate with me.

I mean, how romantic would you feel after suffering smoke inhalation or a broken leg?

So that is why there isn't a lot of ship. There's the start of ship but we aren't quite there yet. Realism strikes again.

This story now has a sequel called Embers (which I will post here some time along (if you wanna read the unrevised version, it's at ff.net. It's also unfinished.)).

That's about it. I hope that you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. *)