Chapter 34

Erinyes

Gaige looked around, noting that the other two machines were either down, or in the process of collapsing and turned to the observation window and spread her arms.

"Really? That's it?" She called up, feeling a bit disappointed. Not only had they taken down all of the machines, but they'd basically done it solo.

She could see a small twitch in Mrs. Holloway's face, but her voice was level as she responded "Yes, well, it does seem that we have a few things to work out before going to market. Oh well, we'll just have to try harder next time."

"Next..." Gaige blinked a few times before slowly raising her rifle "What makes you think there's gonna be a next time?"

"My dear girl, if you pull that trigger, you'll be committing murder."

"After what you've done to us? I think not."

"And what have I done to you? Hm? Nothing. I have merely observed as our automated defenses attempted to do their job defending a facility that you and your compatriots have trespassed upon. So, you see, from the legal point of view, until I actually attack you, you cannot touch me."

Gaige ground her teeth. The old woman was right, if she did shoot her right there, she'd get charged with murder, again and with the pull that the remnants of the Holloway corporation had, she'd probably wind up with another bounty on her head and be forced back on the run. But if she didn't do something, she'd always have to look over her shoulder waiting for her to strike.

She'd had enough, she couldn't take any more of this. She was finally happy, but things kept interfering with her life and making her lose what she'd worked so hard to gain.

"Why can't you just leave me alone." She yelled at the smug woman.

"You still think you can ask that after what you did? After what you took from me, from us?"

"Oh, blow it out your ass you old cow. What I did? What'd I do? Huh? Expose your crimes? That's not something you should be mad about, you're the one that was dumb. I mean, you had to know what was going on, but did you try and stop it? No, you chose greed over what you knew was right, so you don't get to stand there and pretend you've been wronged."

"I didn't do anything wrong." Came the shouted reply.

"Oh, bull. You knew full well where the money was coming from, what your husband or ex or whatever was doing to get it and you did nothing. Nothing. You reveled in your wealth. I mean, you pricks have always been wealthy, but this was on a whole other level and you couldn't get enough, so you turned a blind eye to where it was coming from and just reveled in it, so you don't get to bitch about it when it catches up to you."

"Like you never did anything illegal for money. Get over yourself. You're the same as me."

"No, I'm not. Sure, I've done some sketchy things in my time, but you know what? No matter how low I got, how poor, there were designs that I never sold. Things that I couldn't let out onto the market no matter how much money they would've made me, so no, I'm not like you."

"Well, continue to delude yourself if you want. But that doesn't change the fact that you can't lay a finger on me, so until next time." She nodded to Gaige, but Gaige could see that her face was drawn and ridged with fury as she turned and started walking away.

Gaige's fingers tightened around the gun, she knew that she couldn't let the woman walk away, but she also couldn't act, so she stood there, torn about what to do when a crack rang out.

At first she thought Artemis must have shot Mrs. Holloway, but she didn't see any bullet hole. It took her a second to realize that it hadn't been a gunshot she'd heard, but an ominous cracking that continued to be heard as bits of the valley's walls gave way and came skittering down, causing both Gaige and Mrs. Holloway to look up.

What Gaige saw made her jaw drop as the cracking grew louder. It seemed that when the mech's laser had flown around the wall, it had blasted through a good amount of the cliff face, weakening it considerably so that it was only a matter of time before it broke loose and now it was about to let go.

With a deafening crack, the entire chunk broke loose, tumbling and crashing down till it collided with the observation room, obliterating it and anyone inside.

Turning away from the wave of dust that flew over her, she looked around and spotting Deathtrap floating towards her, called out "You alright?"

"Urru" Came the reply, so she gave his proffered hand a good slap before hopping down from the corpse of the mech.

"Urggruu"

"Yeah, I know. Kinda disappointing wasn't it." She said, shaking her head "But it's over now."

She looked at the mechs and wondered if they had a self-destruct system like some of the others had and then she remembered Artemis was still inside hers. When she'd first shot out of the rubble, Gaige had wondered if she was using it for cover, but now she was worried that the other girl might be trapped, so she took off running in its direction.

It took her a minute to cover the ground and by the time she got there Deathtrap was already floating up near where the shot had come from, calling in to try and find Artemis.

"A little *cough* help." Came weakly from inside, spurring Gaige to attempt to scramble up the mountain of metal.

Despite slipping and sliding a bit, she soon found herself face to barrel with Artemis's rifle. Unconsciously jerking to the side, she nearly lost her footing, but managed to recover before Deathtrap could intervene. Peering in, she spotted a bloody mess that it took her a minute to recognize. It didn't help that Artemis had been covered in sweat, doused with dust and blood and wedged into a space that no human should fit in, but behind her dusty goggles, Gaige could see her eyes, letting her know that she was still alive.

"Come on, let's get this junk off of her." She called to Deathtrap, while attempting to toss some of the bits out of the way. "Hold on, we'll get you outta there in no time."

"Don't worry about me. *cough* I'm not goin anywhere."

Gaige smiled thinly at the attempt at humor. She was still worried about the entire thing exploding, which wasn't helped by the fact that it felt like an oven was underneath the pile. She couldn't imagine how uncomfortable it must be inside there, but she knew that they needed to not only hurry, in case the reactor inside was overheating, but also, they had to be careful, a pile this unstable might collapse as they tried to move things, crushing the vary person they were trying to save.

After they cleared the front enough that Gaige could pull the rifle out of the way, Deathtrap grabbed onto the top plate and started to lift just enough that Gaige could grab hold of Artemis's wrists and pull, but immediately stopped when the other girl let out a strange whimper that was close to a silent scream. She watched the color slowly return to her face beneath the layer of dust and once her breathing resumed asked "What's wrong?"

"It felt like something was tearing." Came the thin reply.

"Babe, I'm gonna need you to lift it as far as you can, I'm gonna need to get in there and see what's up."

Deathtrap nodded and slowly started lifting the mass of metal, feeling the strain on his joints, but he didn't say anything, getting Artemis out was too important to hesitate now, so he lifted with all of his might till Gaige yelled for him to stop.

He'd seen it too, as he'd got higher, the junk on top had started to shift, threatening to topple over onto the piece he was holding and if that much weight hit it, he wouldn't be able to keep it up. He just hoped it was high enough to get Artemis out.

Gaige shot him a quizzical look and when he nodded that he had it, she crawled in, shimmying up to the other girl.

"Leave me." She hissed, obviously getting weak from the heat.

"Oh, shut up." Gaige snapped as she wriggled past. She wished their situations had been reversed since the thinner girl would've been able to operate better in the small space, but she was still glad to be able to help her friend, though she wished it wasn't in these circumstances.

Soon enough she got to the other girls' legs and saw the problem, one leg had a spear of metal through it, but the other one was in really bad shape.

"I can cut one of your legs loose." She said, wincing slightly at the news she was being forced to deliver "But I'm afraid you're going to lose the other one."

Hunter's Moon

A Few Hours Later

"This sucks." Artemis moaned, leaning back in the chair.

"Look on the bright side, it could've been worse."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it could've been switched." Gaige replied, motioning towards her legs and the backup cybernetic that she'd had to break out again. To get her free, they'd had to cut her cybernetic off and have Deathtrap carry her back, much to their embarrassment. Still, like she'd pointed out, if the legs had been switched, she would be needing a new cybernetic, not that she didn't need one anyway. "Or if the thing had entirely collapsed, you would've been squashed. I mean, I know you said that you need to fight like you don't care if you live, but that was just plain stupid. What were you thinking?" Gaige couldn't keep the lightness in her voice as she started imagining what might have happened.

"It wasn't a well thought out plan. In retrospect, I guess I should've just shot up the inside or something."

"Or you could've just tossed the bomb in and ran away."

"Yeah, that might've worked as well, I just wanted to make sure it was placed properly, I wasn't expecting my path out to clog up like that."

Gaige heard the regret in her voice and didn't press. She knew they all made mistakes in the moment, so she couldn't really get too mad if she was truly sorry.

"But this makes, what? The fifth time I need to replace this thing. This is starting to get ridiculous. And to make it worse, not only do I have to build it from scratch, but I'm all outta the good colors to coat it with. This sucks."

Now it was Gaige's turn to feel bad, she knew the other girl had gone through a lot since they'd met, including her having to take her cybernetic apart rather frequently. On top of that, due to the frequency of the repairs, she'd had to make her limbs over and over resulting in her using up most of the Honeystuck Wibbler wings she'd collected.

"Tell you what, once this is over and everything's straightened out, we'll go back and I'll help you scour the planet until we find another set of wings in the right colors, alright?"

"Wait, what else do we have left to finish up?"

"We've gotta let everyone know that we're fine and that this is over. I mean, sure, there's probably a number of the Holloway Robotics employees left out there that wanna do us harm, but the main threat's over, so we need to tell, A.I. ngel and Timothy about it and I need to tell my dad." She paused and her eyes widened a bit "Oh crap, I need to tell my dad everything. Not lookin forward to that one."

She seemed to deflate at the prospect of having to tell her father everything that had happened recently, especially since she'd hidden it from him earlier, so that wasn't something that she was particularly looking forward to. She figured he'd understand why she'd done it, but the thought of losing his trust weighed on her.

Shaking her head, she continued "And after we finish those calls, which I suppose we could do on the way, I've got a couple of stops I wanna make, though I suppose one of them should wait till after you're back on your feet, so to speak."

"Why, where are they?"

"Your feet? Or where I wanna go?"

Artemis fixed her with a flat stare, letting her know that now wasn't' the time for humor, so Gaige relented a bit.

"Fine, the second place I wanted to go was one of those beach planets. We kinda talked about it back there and I figured, what the heck, why not. So, I thought we could go, unless you're really opposed or something."

Artemis shrugged, it didn't matter to her, as long as they packed a bunch of sunscreen and it was fairly privet, she wasn't comfortable showing her skin on the beach, which even she realized was a bit ironic considering how she normally dressed, but everybody had their idiosyncrasies.

"And the other place?"

"It's a surprise."

"I'm not overly fond of surprises, especially when I can't run away from them."

"Trust me, this one isn't gonna be that bad."

"Oh, so it's gonna be partially bad? Is that it?"

"No. It's just gonna be something I need to do, that's all." She knew that she could say more or that she didn't have to go there to do what she needed to, but she wanted to, that was all, she just felt like it was the right place to have that particular discussion. "Well, I'm gonna punch in the course and then I guess I gotta call my dad."

"If you don't want to talk to him, then don't."

"I do, it's just, well, I gotta come clean about this entire thing, that's all."

"Oh, alright. In that case shouldn't we talk to A.I. ngel first? I mean, she's probably waiting up to see if we're alright and she already knows everything."

"Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I just didn't wanna procrastinate too long on mine, but you make a lot of sense."

"Speaking of which, are we really not going to talk about this?"

"Talk about what?"

"What happened down there. The entire thing with the Holloway's and all that."

"What's there to talk about? It's over."

"You did kinda wipe out an entire family, you know."

"What? No I didn't, I only killed one of them, and it was an accident." But even as she said it, she realized the other girl was right. Inadvertent as it might have been, she'd just killed the last member of Marcie's immediate family. When she thought about it, Gaige was surprised to find that she really didn't feel much beyond a dim sense of sadness. It wasn't that she didn't sympathize with them, but each of the Holloway's had brought it upon themselves, so there wasn't anything she could've done about it, besides letting them kill her that is, and since she wasn't about to do that, she didn't think she'd done anything wrong. Not that she hadn't felt a bit bad even when she'd been entirely right before, but she didn't think she was going to lose any sleep over this one. She wondered if that made her a bad person and then realized that was exactly the kind of thinking that she'd often chastised Artemis about.

She shrugged "Maybe you're right, but I tried, didn't I? I always tried to let them walk away."

"Doesn't make it easier."

"Since when did you become a psychoanalytical type?"

"I'm not, I just know that sometimes we feel bad even when we haven't done anything wrong."

"Yeah, I get that, but truly, I'm good. In fact, I'm kinda relieved that I don't have to be lookin over my shoulder anymore."

"Maybe you shouldn't get ahead of yourself, I mean, we both have plenty of people who're after us."

"Maybe, but I'm not going to let them dominate my thoughts anymore."

Gaige turned and walked away with a smile, leaving Artemis to turn to Deathtrap and say "So what do you think?"

"Urgurrru"

"Yeah, she does seem fine."

Galia

A Few Days Later

They'd taken care of their calls before calling it a night. A.I. ngel had been visibly relieved that they were alright and happy that they were finally clear from the mess. She'd also been ecstatic that she'd been helpful, practically jumping up and down when she'd found out that she'd saved them and had figured out where Holloway was before they could get too many of the mechs up and running.

Both her and Timothy had been shocked to hear that it had been Mrs. Holloway and not her husband that had been after them, but as soon as the shock cleared, they both acknowledged that it did make sense, the plan had a bit more finesse to it than anything that Mr. Holloway had come up with.

They'd also eventually given in to the girl's incessant pestering and agreed to pick her up before they went back to Jaka, so that they could finish the hunting trip that had been interrupted at the start of the adventure and bid them good night.

Gaige wasn't the happiest with the way things had turned out on the call, but she couldn't complain either, after all, if it hadn't been for those two, there was a good chance she'd be in jail at that moment and if not, she'd be headed to face Mrs. Holloway after giving her enough time to finish all of the mechs they'd seen in the base.

While Deathtrap had been picking Artemis up and making sure she was healing properly, Gaige had poked her head into the hangers where the mechs had been and had found at least four more in stages of partial construction. She'd wanted to destroy them all, but they didn't have enough bombs with, so she'd rigged up their power cores to detonate after a bit of time and they'd left, enjoying the sounds of the explosions echoing through the mountains as they left.

After she finished talking to A.I. ngel, Gaige knew she couldn't put off her next call any longer, or rather, she shouldn't. Sure, she could've waited until the next morning, taken a shower first and had a long breakfast, but that wouldn't make it any easier. Besides, if she didn't get this off her chest now, she didn't think she'd sleep all that well, no matter how comfortable the bed was, so she'd keyed in her dad's number and waited.

It didn't take long for his familiar face to pop up on screen and with a great amount of trepidation, she interrupted him declaring he had good news by telling him she had something important to tell him. Once she had his attention, she told him the entire story, from the attack on Jaka up to the death of Mrs. Holloway. It wasn't easy, but she got through it without any real issues. She'd even managed to weave into it why she hadn't told him, that she hadn't wanted him to have to sit there and worry, that she didn't want anyone observing him to think he could be used against her, that she didn't know how to tell him that Holloway was back and after her again, not after everything they'd been through.

For his part, her dad nodded, he wasn't happy about being kept out of the loop, but he understood, it was his daughter's way of trying to protect him, but he reminded her that it wasn't her job, that was his. Still, he'd been surprised to find out what they'd been up to, not to mention the fact that Holloway Robotics had a blacksite out there. He'd assumed that they'd had one, but hadn't really given it much thought after the company's assets had been seized.

In the end, he expressed a bit of remorse at the death of Marcie's mom, it wasn't that he condoned what she'd done and he understood her less than her husband, but he sympathized with her losing everything, not just once, but twice over.

Eventually he got to his good news, figuring it would be a good thing to end the conversation with, he'd finally gotten the money out of the government, so it should've been transferred into her account by then. He made it sound like he'd had his own epic confrontation, complete with treachery and backstabbing, narrow misses and lots of paperwork, but in the end, he'd triumphed.

He also asked when she was coming to visit, now that things had slowed down, but Gaige explained what she had to do yet, so she didn't know, but she'd let him know as soon as she did.

So, the next few days had passed in peace, Gaige had gotten to attend another of her meetings, had helped Artemis try and fix her cybernetic as best they could, getting it tuned enough that she could walk normally on it and just generally had a relaxing time.

Then they got to Galia.

They'd entered orbit and traveled down to the surface, walking the hedge lined streets until suddenly Gaige stopped and looked around.

"Do you recognize this spot?" She asked.

"Uh, isn't this where we first met?"

"You remembered."

"How could I forget?" Came the soft reply. "But why're we here?"

"I figured this was the most appropriate spot to have this conversation, being that it was where everything started." Noticing the look of fear creeping into the other girls' features, Gaige quickly held up a hand "It's nothing like that, it's just that, well, we need to talk, and it's important so, um..."

Artemis was looking more depressed with each word and the fact that Gaige was faltering wasn't helping any.

"Why is this so hard?" Gaige muttered "I've gone over this in my head a million times, I know what I want to say, but it's like it's getting stuck in my chest. It's nothing bad, it's just, um, well, we need to talk about something, something that I've been thinking about for a while now."

Gaige took a deep breath and whispered "You can do this." Before looking up "Back when, um, after I'd made a, well, fool's too light a word. Why can't I say this?"

She glanced over at Deathtrap, but he just shot her a thumbs up, which didn't help her at all.

"Alright, I just need to say this," She took a deep breath, remembering what she'd once been told about just starting somewhere and letting the conversation wind past what she wanted to say. "So, back in the Garden, I, uh, I told you that I'd think about us, about what I wanted. Between us, I mean. So, I gave it a lot of thought, I mean a lot. That's what I've been mulling over for the last month or so, I mean, what did I want? I had no idea. It's not easy figuring that out, I mean, I knew some of the things I didn't want, I didn't want to lose you for instance, no matter what I chose, but that wasn't what I was meaning. I mean, now that we're square and our debts are settled, don't say it, I know you think you still owe me, trust me, I know, I feel the same way about you, so we both need to understand that the other feels indebted and try and move forward, which is what I'm trying to do.

"Anyway, I thought about it, I mean, what did I want? Did I want to be with a girl? I mean, I've never really thought about it, I mean, I don't find the idea appalling, but I'd never really give it any thought at all, not really, not until our, well, um, until I screwed up.

"Back then, I decided that I'd figure it out, what I wanted, not just from you, but from myself, for myself. And I owe you an answer to what I've decided." She held up her hand to forestall the inevitable argument "I know you don't want to talk about it, I get it, but like I said, this is as much for my sake as yours, I needed to figure out what I wanted moving forward and how you fit into it.

"After much thought I've come to realize that your friendship is the most important thing to me, well, maybe aside from Deathtrap. And my family. Wait, that makes you sound like a distant third and that's not it.

"Gah, I'm really makin a mess of this. Alright, here goes. I value your friendship. You make me a better person. Without you, I'm just a mess and I know that's something that you didn't want dropped on you, that you have your own issues to deal with, but if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here today. And even if I was, I wouldn't be as good a person, so I owe you.

"Having said that, I don't want to do anything that would seem like I'm just trying to pay you back, so I kept running in circles in my head. But that's neither here nor there. What I'm trying to say is I like you, you're the first real friend I've had in a long time and I don't want to screw that up, so there's that.

"But that's not what I was trying to figure out, I mean, of course you were my friend. You stuck with me when you didn't have to, even though it caused you a lot of pain.

"But enough dancing around it, here goes" She took a deep breath and continued "What I was trying to figure out was, do I like girls. Do I want to try and be with one, romantically. I mean, I always thought I liked boys, well, men, but someone recently pointed out I was just trying to fill a hole in my life and once I figured that out, things started shifting, I no longer felt the same attraction I once did. But did that mean I was willing to try something else? I didn't know. I mean, I never really thought about it before. So, I gave it a lot of thought and I concluded that I don't really want to date girls." She paused and took a deep breath, watching Artemis for any kind of reaction and not finding one, so she continued "But I do want to try dating one of them."

Still nothing from the other girl.

Gaige nervously continued "What I'm tryin to say is, well, I'd like to try dating you, if that's alright. I mean, I don't want to jeopardize our friendship so I wanna take it slow. As slow as we need to. I don't wanna do anything we're gonna regret so we can take things as slow as you're comfortable with and when you're ready, we can move forward as much as you want."

She stopped, nervously shifting from one foot to the other and when she got no response she asked "So, uh, what do ya think?"

"Why do you keep pushing this, why won't you just drop it?"

"Cause I like you. I mean, I really like you. I don't want to be apart from you. I don't want to imagine you with someone else, whenever I tried, it made my insides fell tight, like something was clenching my chest and I hated it, even if it was just my imagination, I hated it."

"That's just how you think you feel."

"Can you honestly tell me that if I told you that I was gonna go sleep with some man, that you wouldn't care?"

"It's your life."

"Do you care?"

"Of course I care!" Artemis snapped, "I'd feel awful, but I'd support you if that's what you wanted."

"So, when I say I want you, why do you pull back?"

"Cause you can do better than me. You deserve better."

"Maybe, probably not, but even if that was the case, I don't want better."

"But you shouldn't want to be with a monster."

"You're not a monster!" Gaige shouted. Taking a deep breath to try and calm herself she continued "And even if you were, it doesn't matter to me. You don't think I've done some pretty rotten stuff in my life? I have. You know it. So, if you wanna insist you're a monster, I guess we'll just have to be monsters together."

"You shouldn't live like that."

"Neither should you. Don't you get it, I wanna be with you."

"Why? I've got nothing to offer you."

"You've got everything I want." Gaige reached out and pulled up the other girls' face, staring her in the eyes. "I've spent my entire life trying to figure out what I wanted out of it and for the first time, I've found it."

"Why." It was almost too soft for Gaige to hear "Why me?"

"Beats me. All I know is that I don't wanna lose you. That when I'm with you I feel alive. It's not that I wanna fix you, it's just that we fit together perfectly, that we hold each other's damaged and broken pieces together. That when I'm with you I like myself a little more. That I wanna see you smile, to experience real happiness, not just some fragment that you cling to, but a complete happiness, one that fills you. I just wanted you to be happy being you, to smile each day, to enjoy your time. I want to be the one to give it to you and I know that that might sound greedy but I don't care. I told you before, I wanna be with you till the stars fall out of the sky and I mean that more now than when I first told it to you. I'm in love with you and I'm sorry that it took me this long to figure it out."

They both froze at the admission, one Gaige hadn't even admitted to herself. Artemis felt warmth spreading through her chest accompanied by a strange tightness and as Gaige watched in increasing panic, tears started running down her cheeks.

"Uh, oh man, was it really that traumatic?" She asked, only to be punched, not very hard, by Artemis.

Gaige glanced over at Deathtrap only to find that he wasn't there, he'd given them a bit of privacy, though he was watching over them, wishing them the best.

"I...I don't know what this means." Gaige eventually said as lightly as she could.

"It..It.." Artemis couldn't get the words out. She knew that she should reject Gaige, that she shouldn't invite this kind of disaster upon them, but she couldn't get the words out. She wanted to say no, to say yes, to shove her away, to hug her so she found herself frozen, afraid to reach out for what she wanted.

Eventually Deathtrap had enough of it and flew back in to shove Gaige in the back, pushing her into Artemis.

She automatically wrapped her arms around the smaller girl and felt her melt into her, as a feeling of contentment spread through her, she couldn't help but shoot Deathtrap a look and mutter "Meddlesome bot." Before turning to the girl in her arms and for the first time, felt content. The same kind of contentment that she'd felt as a child and she realized that she was home. After all those years on the road, she'd finally found where she belonged. And she didn't plan on letting go.

An End