Savages Recruit (18 page)

Zora had nothing to say. Her tears weren't just coming from a place of being sad and upset that she got yelled at, they were being fueled by a hysterical fear that Savage was nothing like he'd pretended to be, that she was about to go somewhere very dangerous with a man who might actually be more dangerous than all the terrorists put together.

"Don't worry, he'll calm down," Anja said, pulling some tissues out of one of her many pockets. "He likes you."

"He h..h..h..aates me," Zora sobbed.

"Fucking hell," Anja muttered under her breath. "He doesn't hate you. He's gaga over you alright? He's just pissed off because you made him look like an asshole in front of Brown and he's worried that you're going to get us all killed over there."

That made Zora stop crying long enough to talk coherently. "I'm not going to get you killed."

"Eh," Anja shrugged. "You're a loose cannon. Loose cannons kill people."

"No," Zora shook her head vehemently. "Not me."

Anja shrugged. "We'll see, won't we."

Wiping her eyes, Zora shook her head. "I am not going to get you killed. I can do my job. It's all this extra bullshit I can't stand."

The door slammed open again, making her squeal with fear. He was back, and he was holding a thick leather belt. He'd shed almost all uniform on the upper half of his body and was wearing only a white wife-beater that clung to the musculature of his torso. The muscles in his arm were bulging with tension. "Anja. Brian. Get out."

"Don't leave me," Zora begged them, but they left quickly and she was once more alone with a very angry, very large man. He towered above her, his powerful outline silhouetted in a fashion that she once would have found erotic but now seemed terrifying.

"Come here." He was still angry, but he'd found a modicum of self control. She didn't trust it though. It was too soon to forget how furious he really was under that thin veneer.

She shook her head and cowered away from him. "You're going to kill me."

Her defiance was enough to make the veneer crack and crumble away completely. "COME HERE!" He thundered the order, his bellowing voice making the windows shake. Maybe yelling louder was the way to get a soldier to obey. It wasn't the way to get Zora to obey, it was the way to scare the hell out of her. She panicked and scrabbled under the nearest bed. Bad idea. It wasn't wide enough to hide her from him and he reached down and dragged her out bodily, cutting the first lash of the belt across her ass before she was even all the way out.

Something else took over then. Scared out of her wits and caught up in the throes of a powerful flight or fight reaction, Zora's animal mind registered that her attempt at flight had failed. Another woman might have cringed and begged, but that approach had failed too and he was raising the lash again. Concerned only with protecting herself, Zora lashed out wildly with fists and feet.

Savage was much larger, much stronger, much more well trained, but desperation and panic can transform even the most ordinary woman into something quite extraordinary. It helped a great deal that he wasn't expecting a fight, he was expecting to lay into her ass with the strap. His arm was still raised high in the air when she struck with flailing fury, her fist meeting his nose with a solid CRACK, whilst almost simultaneously her booted toe lodged itself in the upper regions of his inner thigh.

The results were instantaneous, though strangely silent. He didn't shout in pain so much as make a strangled cry as he dropped the belt and clutched at his nose with one hand, sinking to the floor with his other hand cupping his junk.

Zora took the opportunity to run faster than she'd ever run in her life. She slammed out of the barracks and took to her heels. She did not get far. Anja and Brian were waiting outside, posted like sentries. Anja grabbed her as she rushed past and swung her around. "What are you doing?"

"Running," Zora panted. There was a little bit of blood on her knuckles when she looked down at them, but she was pretty sure it wasn't her own.

Anja's grip tightened on her. "What did you do to him?"

Zora didn't have to answer, the barracks door opened with a slow creak and Savage limped out, his nose a bloody mess. He was holding a handkerchief delicately under his nose to staunch the flow of blood. It wasn't doing a very good job, it had already turned red and was beginning to drip crimson dollops into the dusty ground. His wife-beater was a mess, spattered with the stuff.

"Sir," Anja dropped Zora, forgetting about her completely. "You're injured." She rushed forward and began examining him. Even the light touch of her delicate fingers on his face made him wince.

"I bink ibs broken," Savage offered his opinion quite calmly, as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time and was only worth the passing note of the event.

Anja rounded on Zora, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "You did this to him? I'm supposed to believe that you're a plain old civilian and you did this to him?"

Zora put her hands up in the air, armed hold up style. "I didn't mean to. It was an accident."

Anja took a menacing step forward, as if she intended to avenge Savage then and there. "That's a hell of an accident," she growled. Her fists were balled up at her sides and Zora took a quick couple of steps away, putting distance between them in case Anja did take a swing.

"Enub Anja. I will deal wib Zora laber," Savage said. He was no longer enraged. He didn't even seem angry anymore. He reached out towards Zora and she cowered, expecting a slap, but he merely tussled her hair, mixing dust and blood into her already messy locks. She tried to work out what was going on, what he was feeling, but it was impossible to tell. She'd broken his nose. He should have been angrier than ever, but the temper that had gripped him was gone.

Instead it was Anja who took up the torch of recrimination. Her wide blue eyes glittered with venom and something else – was it fear? She hissed at Zora like feral cat, her words thick with judgment as she uttered what was fast becoming Zora's own special curse.

"Loose. Fucking. Canon."

Chapter Twelve

As time went by, Zora became more frantic and worried about what she'd done. She couldn't believe she'd slugged Savage in the nose. She wasn't a slugging sort of person, was she? Had she become a slugging sort of person without noticing?

What remained of the team had gathered around her almost immediately after Savage's departure and ushered her into the empty barracks that were theirs until they deployed. She rather got the feeling they were guarding her until such time as Savage came back to kill her.

For the most part they sat in silence, though Tank and Archie eventually broke out a pack of cards and started a game, a game Zora was pointedly not invited to play. The atmosphere was heavy and pensive. Zora was allowed to pace back and forth without anyone saying a word to her, but if she got to close to the door, Steve would silently move to stand in front of it, his arms folded across his chest, his beard bushy with intensity. Sometimes Steve's beard said more than he did. When he was in a good mood it flowed neatly down his chest, but when he was agitated it would prickle and bristle with the movement of his jaw. She was trapped alright. Giving up on the pacing, she sat down next to Brian who was reclining on one of the bunks with his eyes closed and nudged him gently. "Are you going to blank me too?"

Brian shook his head. He didn't open his eyes, though his lips twisted wryly. "You never cease to amaze, Zora."

"It was an accident," Zora pleaded. "You have to believe me."

"I do believe you," he said amiably. "There is no way it could have been anything else."

"Savage is going to kill me now, isn't he? I mean literally."

Brian opened his eyes and turned his serious gaze on her. "If he wanted to kill you, you'd be dead. If he wanted to hurt you, you'd be hurt. You might have hit him accidentally, but it's no accident you're sitting there without a scratch on you."

"Yeah," Zora admitted gloomily, putting her head in her hands and staring at the dusty floor. "You're probably right."

Brian patted her on the shoulder. "Relax, it's not like we haven't all broken a commanding officer's nose before."

She looked up hopefully. "Really?"

"Not really," he shook his head and gave her a small grin. "The story is probably all over base already."

Zora groaned into her hands. "Does this mean the mission won't be going ahead?"

"It has to go ahead, and it has to go ahead with you on it," Brian said simply. "Those are just the facts of the matter. There isn't anyone else who can do what you do."

Zora glanced over at the far end of the room where Steve had joined Tank and Archie at their game. "Let me guess, nobody is happy about that."

"They'll get over it. It's not their call to make," Brian said simply.

"And you? Do you not want me on the team?"

Brian shrugged. "It's not my call to make either."

"Ouch," Zora muttered as she got up and moved away from Brian to sit on her own. That hurt, though she couldn't blame Brian for not wanting her on the team, she had been behaving very erratically of late. Why couldn't she get herself together? Was there something wrong with her? Would she ever actually be of use to anyone?

She would have thought herself into a pile of sick, but fortunately for Zora her inner journey of self loathing was interrupted by the one person who definitely disliked her more than she disliked herself. "Where is she?" Anja barked the question as she barged into the barracks, slamming the door behind her. She laid eyes on Zora with an unpleasant smirk. "There you are. Savage will see you now," she said, her voice saturated with bitchiness.

Zora rushed across the compound with Anja, ignoring the other woman's frequent sneers and jibes. She didn't care about what Anja thought. She just wanted to see Savage and apologize for what she had done.

Anja ushered her into a small hospital wing, it was well kept and very clean, more so than the civilian hospital Zora had been in. Savage was in one of the private examination rooms, Anja informed her. "He wants to see you alone," she said, pausing outside a door marked 'Exam Room 3'. "But I'll be waiting outside in case you try to kill him again."

"Yeah, that's why you're waiting," Zora replied, pushing the door to Savage's room open. Bloody Anja just wanted to hear her get punished.

Anja was one sick puppy, but Zora forgot all about her when she laid eyes on Savage. He was sitting on the edge of a bed, his powerful frame bent slightly as he did up his shirt sleeves. He'd been cleaned up considerably since she'd last seen him and he was no longer covered in his own blood. He'd washed his face and someone had gotten him a new shirt. He looked good as new. Almost. As he turned his head to look at her, she saw that he had a thick white bandage over his nose and the skin under his left eye was swollen and quickly turning black. Horrified at what she'd managed to do to him, Zora simply stared dumbly, her hands clapped over her mouth.

To her immense relief he did not scowl or glower. If anything his expression was neutral and when he spoke, his tone was mild. "Well, young lady, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I'm so sorry," Zora stammered, slowly lowering her hands. "I never meant to do that."

He raised a brow. "You do a lot of damage unintentionally," he noted dryly.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I'm sorry."

"This is partially my fault," he admitted. "I lost my temper with you. I should never have dealt with you when I was angry."

Reassured that he wasn't going to break her neck, Zora shuffled a little closer to him, stopping at the end of the bed where she picked at the corner of the bed sheet, then raised her eyes to meet his. "It's a pretty big temper you have. You were scary."

He looked at her with humor dancing in his eyes. "And apparently you don't react well to fear, or at least, not well for the thing you're afraid of." The humor faded and he sighed as his face contorted, making him look positively wracked with regret. "You're not ready for this. I shouldn't have brought you into it."

"I am plenty ready for this," Zora snapped, suddenly tired of being told she wasn't good enough. "What I'm not ready for is you treating me like a child one moment and snapping at me for not being more grown up the next. You need to stop messing with my head. I can do what you need me to do blindfolded if you just let me get on with it."

A small chuckle escaped him. "Is that so?"

She glared at him stubbornly. "Yes, it is so."

He stood up and moved towards her. "So you're saying that I'm too overbearing?"

She took a cautious step back, keeping her head held high. "I'm saying you can't make up your mind what to do with me and you get frustrated with me for not being any of the things you want. You screamed at me like I was some kind of insolent recruit and expected me to take it well. I'm not some teenage kid you can howl and smack into submission. It's not going to work, Brett." His first name felt slightly strange on her tongue, but at the same time she knew it was right to say it.

"Brett, huh?" He smirked. "You're very presumptuous, but you're right that this isn't working." His eyes darkened as he looked at her with a purposeful expression. I've made a decision about you Zora."

Zora felt her innards twist. He was going to send her away. She should have been glad of that, it meant that she would be spared a dangerous mission, but instead she felt a sense of loss. What would life be without him? What would it be like to pass day after day knowing that she was not going to see him?

"Don't look so terrified," he smiled. "It's best for us both. We can't continue on the way we've been going."

Her throat was suddenly tight. She nodded, not trusting her voice. He was right. This conclusion had been inevitable. He'd been trying to train her for ages, but it hadn't taken. If anything she was actually more outrageously behaved than she had been when he met her. Sure she didn't drink anymore, but who cared about a drink or two when you were punching people in the face? She lowered her head as he closed the distance between them, not wanting to look at him when he rejected her.