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Rogue and Zack 11
When he returned late that night, Rogue was still sitting at ShinRa. She couldn't have returned to his place without him.
Zack came back with a handful of infantrymen, less than he'd started out with, and a bleeding shoulder wrapped in a battlefield tourniquet. Apparently he could read Rogue's expression even at a distance when she saw that, because he raised his good hand defensively.
“I swear I didn't do anything stupid.” He flinched, the hand quickly shifting to grip his shoulder. “Honest mistake. Ya know not everyone's untouchable like Sephiroth.”
Rogue felt her stomach tighten as she hurried to his side, fisting one hand and pressing it into the small of his back, urging him forward. Seeing him hurt, something about that... It wasn't settling well with her stomach and nerves at all. Not at all. He was hardly acknowledging the wound, but her heart was pounding, stomach uneasy, throat tight, and a pinwheeling, lost, confused feeling whirled and jumbled her mind. So she seized onto one action, like any good soldier, like a rope in high current.
“We're getting you to the infirmary. What the ******** happened?”
“Rogue, easy, it's not bad.” Was he not seeing the blood? “Really, just a shoulder wound, got hit by one bullet, I'll live. Since when does this kinda thing freak you out?”
“This kinda thing doesn't. That it's my partner, and wouldn't have happened if I'd been there and had your back, is what's bothering me. The infantry... Might as well get an army of slum orphans and slap rifles in their hands.”
“Geez, easy,” his tone was one of amusement now. “You gonna flip out on your dad for keeping you behind now?”
“Maybe.”
“Christ... Speaking of, what'd you two talk about?”
“Not now,” Rogue began in a tired tone. “He's more annoying than ever. I'll feed you the five minute talk he kept me behind for as you're passing out into a morphine induced coma tonight.”
“That bad?”
“Count yourself lucky you're going to be on morphine.”
Zack chuckled softly and shook his head. “You make me feel bad about growing up in a happy home. I almost feel like I should be trading with you.”
“Nah, I think things were cosmically correct. I was meant to have the biting sarcasm, dark cynicism, and amazing cunning. You were meant to be emotionally stable, doggedly determined, and almost annoyingly optimistic. We are ying and yang, my friend, a balance. And we wouldn't work like we do if things had gone differently. If I'd had a happy family, I wouldn't even be a SOLDIER.”
She nudged him into the elevator and punched the button she needed, crossing her arms and standing at his side, tilting her head back to stare up at the fluorescent lights.
“Is that... Necessarily so bad? Besides... If, as you say, we were meant to meet, to be friends, maybe you would've gotten another job around here somewhere, and I'd be the gung-ho SOLDIER. You know, the big hero that sweeps the little... Coffee shop maid, who happens to have a thing for men in uniform, off her feet.” He punctuated his last sentence with a wink.
Rogue blinked and tilted her head over toward him, her expression deadpan.
“You have got to get the corny meter checked out. I think getting shot at addled your brain.”
The little banter kept a smile on Zack's face all the way up to the infirmary. That was a plus in Rogue's book. Yeah, true, the injury wasn't as bad as she was making it out to be, not at all, but, just looking at it she could tell the bullet would be firmly lodged in the bone. Meaning it was painful now, removal would be horrible without the aid of drugs, and he was in for one nasty recovery. A SOLDIER would need both arms, and with one shoulder bone and a good deal of muscle injured... It was gonna make his job hard.
White coated nurses waited in the infirmary and two seized Zack. Neither told Rogue to back off. Could be that they knew better, after giving her the Mako injections she'd needed going through to First, with how Zack hadn't once allowed himself to be separated from her, or maybe they just were too tired and bitchy to care right then in the early morning hours.
They shepherded him onto one of the flimsy hospital beds that was more glorified gurney, sitting him up there as one of them unstrapped the tourniquet from his upper arm, revealing the actual wound. Yes, it was clean, but deep. As Rogue had predicted, the bullet had most likely burrowed into the bone of Zack's shoulder. She felt herself flinch for him.
“Damn...” She moved close to his side, standing on the opposite side of his injured arm. “What'd you do, run into the bullet?” She teased, but her hand found and rested quickly on top of his on the thin mattress. The glove was rough and thick under her bare palm, but she could feel the slight tremor of his hand beneath that. Yeah, it was hurting him.
Damn it, what a bad time for me to be awkward with this kinda thing...
She wanted to help. She wanted badly, so badly, to make this easier for him somehow. Especially when the doctors grabbed a pair of long tweezer type things, sterilized them with alcohol, and reached into his wound. No painkillers. Nothing.
Okay, then she wasn't keeping her mouth shut. Feeling Zack flinch again, his hand turn beneath hers to grip it as he squinted his eyes shut... It was too much, it kicked up a protective nature somewhere deep down that Rogue had no idea she'd possessed.
“What the ******** is this?” she asked, her voice dangerously quiet and smooth, softly squeezing Zack's hand back. “This's the kinda respect you're gonna treat one of the men who risks his life for the good of this company with? Seriously? This isn't taking care of anyone, this's a cheap a** patch up, and, to be frank, I've heard of field clinics that do a better, kinder job. You dumbasses have nothing better to do this early in the morning. Treat him right. How much do I gotta pay for the good stuff?”
The nurses withdrew to stare at her for her outburst, looking a mix of annoyed, then scared when they saw what was in her eyes. “If you want to pay for the extra, we'll petition Director Lazard to take it out of one of your paychecks...”
“Mine,” Rogue said, nodding as Zack looked up at her. “Just have him take it out of my next paycheck.” She looked down at Zack's objecting gaze. “What? You're the one who pays the bills anyway.” She couldn't hold his stare. Just couldn't. It was one thing to stand there and try to comfort him, another altogether to speak up in outrage on his behalf.
Plus, Zack never took well to being taken care of.
“Don't... I'm fine, really. You need to be saving up your money. I mean, what if something happened to me on a job one day? Where would you go then?” he asked softly as the nurses nodded, leaving them to go for an injection of morphine.
The question he posed numbed Rogue's mind with fear. The thought of losing him... It didn't sit well with her. He was the first person to ever be kind to her, the first to ever take care of her. Watching a trail of blood wind it's way around his bicep down to his wrist, though... This unacceptable thought seemed horrifyingly real.
When you're only sixteen, the thought of losing the only person whose ever cared for you is like contemplating the end of the world.
And losing your first love? Incomprehensible. So, when the two are the same person... Her mind just shut down on the question. Wouldn't contemplate it, wouldn't accept the idea as possible, even though she knew it was a real chance.
“Don't even talk that way. Nothing's going to happen to you. You're too good for that, and, hell, so am I.” And I'd die to protect you if I had to... “Besides, I was willing to live in the park before, I'd be willing to do so again...” But it's not going to come to that, not if I have anything to say about it.
Besides... What would she do if something happened to him? Could she even handle getting up again and going on like life was still the same?
She wasn't so sure about that.
“Alright, alright, got ya. But still... You shouldn't...”
“Look at all we SOLDIER do for this company. The damn President would be completely powerless within the world without us. And the Turks. The same damn company we're keeping afloat should treat you with some respect. Besides, specifically, you're a good guy. You don't deserve to be made to suffer needlessly like that just cause the President's being cheap.”
Zack bit his lip, a bit shyly as he ducked his head to watch the nurse inject a strong shot of morphine into a vein in his arm, his tense muscles relaxing under Rogue's steady hand only a moment later.
“Thank you,” he murmured, looking back up at her with a soft smile as the nurse removed the bullet from his arm, sewed up the hole, since it was so deep, and wrapped it in a thick wad of gauze.
Rogue reached up and tugged one of his spikes playfully, casually. Always casually.
“No problem. I mean, you've spent so much time taking care of me when you really, seriously, don't have to worry about me. Taking me in, helping me through three Mako injections... I haven't even begun to make up for that yet. Oh, and there's simply being my friend, wanting to be my SOLDIER comrade, and dealing with my emotional issues and inadequacies...” The nurses waved Zack up, though he was unsteady on his feet from the morphine (that stuff's strong) and his long day at the Fort, and took Rogue's SOLDIER ID to scan it.
In order to put the charges on it, of course.
They'd barely reached the parking lot before he was nodding off against her. Being head and shoulders smaller than him, and just a petite girl to his muscular guy, holding him up was getting to be a challenge, with him quickly getting more out of it.
s**t... This means I have to drive his Jeep...
After, at an agonizingly slow pace, hunting down Zack's Jeep and helping her groggy partner into the backseat, Rogue climbed in the front.
“Damn it man... I can't see the over the dash...” She swore softly and started hunting down a way to set up so she could, possibly, drive the Jolly Green Giant. Otherwise, they'd be spending the night right here. In the ShinRa parking lot.
After some hunting, Rogue managed to find a toolbox she could prop on the edge of the seat, clinging to the steering wheel to hold it still, so that she could see over the dashboard and still reach the pedals.
“God,” she murmured, twisting the keys she'd confiscated from Zack's pocket in the ignition. “I hope the cops aren't paying attention this morning. I look like a five year old going on one helluva joy ride... Lady Luck, be with me today.”
With that, she swung out of the lot and onto the slowly lightening streets.
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