Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Koda’s eyes are still wide, still not focused entirely on the reality in front of her. She says, “You’re the commander. You followed me.”

Maggie feels her mouth stretch into a grin. “Well, you didn’t exactly give us a choice. You were out front and running away without a word; we had to follow or be left behind.”

The words echo in Kirsten’s mind, left behind, left behind, alone. And suddenly she knows, directly, the same way she knows that her side hurts where she has pulled a muscle in the mad dash for the Jeep and then the insane stumble over the wreckage of the bridge firing a weapon she’s barely touched before, that she is not alone,. From somewhere in the depth of her mind an image forms, a dark-haired woman in a beaded dress, promising. . .promising, it seems, this woman who has just pulled them all out of themselves and drawn from them a courage and a passion they never new was in them. Drawn them straight into the heart of the flame and through it, to come out tempered steel on the other side. “Hey,” she says, quietly, moving to support Koda on her other side. “Let’s get you out of here and get your hands tended to.”

Koda feels their arms around her, Tacoma still half-holding her up from behind, and they begin to make their slow progress back toward the southeast end of the bridge. It was easier, she thinks, when she was not thinking at all; a couple times she stumbles and nearly falls to hands and knees on the jagged concrete. Somewhere someone is shouting. The sound starts small, one man , and then another joining him, and another until it seems the whole small army is yelling, some of them waving their weapons in the air in a decidedly dangerous fashion. It seems odd that Maggie does not have something sharp to say about that. “What’s the matter?” she asks. “What the hell’s with all the noise?”

“You are,” Kirsten says quietly. “Wave at them.”

“Huh?” This makes no sense. I am not drunk. I may, however, be losing my mind. The thought is surprisingly clear.

“Wave, “ Maggie repeats from her other side. “They’ve fought like the devil themselves. They deserve the acknowledgement.”

Koda raises her arm from Maggie’s shoulders and waves at the troops. Their cheering—because that’s what it is, she suddenly realizes—goes on and on and on. Finally her arm will no longer hold itself up, and her knees buckle with sudden weariness. “I’m sorry, I can’t do anymore,” she says.

Maggie bears her up again, Kirsten still firm on the other side. “Come on, “ she says in her best no-backtalk scientist voice. “Let everyone else take a turn at being a hero. Time for you to rest.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE ROOM IS as dark as guilty secrets. Only the faint light from the hallway enters, laying a wedge-shaped pattern across the carpet. It reaches the very edge of the bed and goes no further, as if afraid to disturb the vigil being kept above.

Kirsten sits on a chair that has seen better decades, staring down at Koda, who is so deeply unconscious that she appears, for all the world, dead. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest reassures her silent watcher. Heavily bandaged hands lay quiescent on the dark coverlet, as still as the body that bears them.

Dakota looks small, almost fragile as she lies so still, a lost and broken child in her parents’ bed. Kirsten swallows the lump in her throat, blinking to cast away the vision. She looks up, startled, at a soft sound from the doorway.

Maggie enters, bearing two steaming mugs. Smiling slightly, she walks to Kirsten’s side and hands her one. “Thought you could use this.”

Kirsten takes the offered mug eagerly, wrapping her chilled hands around it and inhaling the comforting aroma with a sigh of pleasure. “Thank you. This is perfect.” Taking a small sip, she lets the coffee roll over her tongue, savoring it for a timeless moment before swallowing. “Bless you, Colonel,” she breathes. “This is just what the doctor ordered.”

“Seeing as you’re sitting in my bedroom,” Maggie replies, smirking, “I think we could dispense with the formalities, don’t you?”

Kirsten glances up, the expression of a guilty child plain upon her face. She begins to rise, but Maggie motions her back down. “No. It’s alright. Stay.” Her smirk softens into a true smile. “I have a strange sense of humor, sometimes.”

Nodding, Kirsten returns the smile with a hesitant one of her own. The space between them is like a chasm; one which she suddenly wishes she could cross.

If she only knew how.

Maggie lowers herself to perch casually on the lower corner of the large bed. Koda doesn’t twitch. The Colonel captures Kirsten in her steady regard. “You were pretty impressive out there,” she murmurs. “Didn’t know you could handle a grenade launcher.” Her lips twitch with a smirk just dying to come out. “Learn that in Bionics 101?”

This time, Kirsten gets the joke and chuckles, saluting Maggie with her mug. Her grin fades. “Absolute terror,” she amends, looking back down at the still figure on the bed. “It was like…I don’t know…like I knew what she was going to do before she did it. And I knew that I wasn’t going to be left behind.” She swallows hard, vision trebling as some strange almost-memory steals through her consciousness like a thief in the night. “Not again.”

Maggie raises an eyebrow in silent inquiry. Kirsten shakes off both the question and the strange feeling with a deliberate closing of her eyes. When she opens them again, she is more her old self—more or less. Her smile, when it comes, is natural, unbidden. “She was a sight to see, though, wasn’t she?”

“That she was,” Maggie replies. “I had myself half-convinced I was watching some old Audy Murphy flick.” A frown creases her forehead. “The top-kick in me is furious with her. It was completely foolhardy and dangerous in the extreme.” The frown disappears as she shrugs. “But it worked, and we’re alive to tell the tale. And I guess that’s all that really matters in the end anyway.”

“So that means you won’t take it out of her hide later?” Kirsten queries with a small smirk of her own.

Maggie snorts. “As if I could.”

Kirsten sobers, looking back down at the bed. “There will be a later, though, right?” She looks up, startled once again, this time by the warm hand that clasps her wrist.

“There will be,” she affirms in a tone that brooks no dissent. “Things like this…take a lot out of her. Almost everything, I think.” She looks down at Koda, her smile warm and affectionate. The adoration on her face causes Kirsten a brief stab of discomfort before she pushes it savagely away. “She just needs some time to get those batteries of hers recharged, and she’ll be good as new.”

When Maggie releases her wrist, Kirsten lifts her arm to finish the last of her coffee. Then she makes as if to rise. “I’ll…um….”

“No. Stay.”

Kirsten looks at her, eyes slightly widened.

Maggie smiles. “Stay. I need to go tell everyone that she’s doing well, and debrief the General as well. I don’t expect to be back until morning, at least. And….” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, opting for the truth, even though the words are like shards of glass in her mouth, “I think she knows you’re here, and I think that’s very important to her.”

“But….”

“Please.”

Keeping her emotions under tight control, Maggie rises gracefully from her perch on the bed and quickly strides across the room. A soft voice halts her in her tracks.

“Maggie?”

She doesn’t, can’t, turn, but Kirsten knows she’s listening.

“Thank you.”

Unable to speak for fear her voice will betray her, Maggie settles for a nod, and continues out of the room.