Truth In The Tequila: Part Two
GUADALAJARA OFFICE OF PETROSIAN MINING AND EXPLORATION
AUGUST 27th, 8:14 am
"Nathan, put the man down!" Bridge snapped. "Now!"
Cable's head whipped around and he gave Bridge a look that would have turned most men into a quivering wreck. Bridge didn't look away, didn't break eye contact for even a moment, but Domino stiffened slightly, obscurely alarmed as she saw the sweat standing out on his forehead.
"Put him down," Bridge repeated slowly, forcing the words out through gritted teeth.
Cable continued to glare at him for a long moment, and then, quite deliberately, dropped Sykes, the P.M.E. representative who had hired them under false pretenses and gotten them into this mess. The stout little accountant yelped as he hit the floor, but scrambled back to his feet quickly. Eyeing Cable nervously, he took off his glasses, wiping them in what was clearly a nervous habit. Domino noted all of this, but most of her attention was on G.W., who had taken a step backwards, his shoulders slumping and a look of incredible relief on his face, as soon as Cable had broken eye contact. Something had happened between the two of them, but she'd be damned if she knew what--or how.
"Ah, yes," Sykes said, obviously trying not to babble, and Domino turned back to him. "That's much better, I'm sure we can talk this over and resolve our problems like civilized people--"
"I have a better idea," Cable growled, and stepped towards the accountant again. Almost before Domino saw him move, Bridge stepped between them and, quite matter-of-factly, slammed a fist into Cable's jaw. Cable stumbled backwards, visibly dazed for a moment, but didn't lose his footing. Rubbing his jaw, he straightened and gave Bridge such a baleful look that Domino flinched, half-expecting him to go for his partner's throat right then and there.
Bridge met that murderous glare with remarkable equanimity. "We all know you're in a foul mood, Nathan. The feeling's mutual. Now, will you settle down before I have to have Grizzly sit on you?"
"Um--G.W., I think you should leave me out of this," Grizzly said a little nervously. Cable gave him a disgusted look, and then turned back to Bridge.
"You got that one free, G.W," he said in a hard voice. "The next one's going to cost you. Now, get out of my way--"
"Not a chance."
"Oath!" Cable snarled, looking skyward as if appealing for divine intervention. "He's a lying, manipulative son of a flonq--"
"He's our employer, damn it! We don't kill our employers, Nathan, even when they deserve it!"
"Sure we can't make an exception?" Domino asked harshly, before she could help herself. Bridge shot her a furious look, and she closed her mouth, seething.
"She's got a point," Grizzly volunteered tentatively. "We let him get away with this, word'll get around and stuff like this'll keep happening--"
"Oh, and you'd prefer to just kill him here and now?" Bridge demanded sarcastically. "Then 'word will get around' that we've taken to murdering our employers, and no one will want to hire us!"
"Ask me if I give a shit for our reputation at this point, G.W.!" Cable snarled bitterly.
"Well, someone has to, Nate," Bridge said bluntly. "He's not worth it--he's just a paper-pusher, damn it! It'd be a waste of ammo." Sykes flinched, paling, but Bridge didn't even look in his direction. "Calm down, all right?" Bridge said more softly, a perplexed look in his dark eyes as he watched Cable. "There are better ways to handle this, Nathan, you know that--"
Domino saw Cable shudder for a moment, as if he was losing his grip on whatever reaction he was struggling to keep in. Then his shoulders slumped, and he turned away, going over to a nearby chair and sitting down. Domino blinked. Did he just--he did. He backed down. Domino reluctantly tore her attention away from him and looked back at Sykes, who had regained his composure with remarkable speed. Bile rose in her throat. She sympathised with Cable's urge to rip the little bastard limb-from-limb. The fact that they'd been tricked into fighting the Harriers was just the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Just thinking about it made her sick.
Ramirez had told his side of the story, told it with such calm, sorrowful bitterness that it hadn't even entered into her mind to question whether or not he was telling the truth. Even if she had, the sight of some of the 'enemy' bodies would have told her something was wrong with the picture P.M.E. had given them. Two of Ramirez's own people had been killed, but the rest of the dead on the other side had been locals. And not just men in their prime, either--the type she'd have expected to find among 'brigands'. No, there had been old men, and boys who'd been little more than children--
The Harriers were only twice the size of the Pack, not nearly enough to carry out an operation like this. But the locals had been more than willing to be trained to help. They had, after all, come to Ramirez in the first place.
"Those mineral rights must be pretty valuable," she heard herself say. Sykes glanced in her direction. "For your company to go to such--lengths," she felt her lip curl, "to get them."
Sykes actually smiled at her. The bastard. "So glad to see that at least one among you understands economic concerns--"
Cable didn't get up, but his glare was enough to make Sykes squirm and take a step backwards. "Economic concerns?" he said almost incredulously. "Economic concerns justify sending out your security troops to 'pressure' the locals into selling you their land? Taking men from their beds and having them beaten--raping their wives in front of them---burning their homes? Your precious flonqing mineral rights are worth that much to you?" His voice was raw with pain by the time he finished, and the silence was electric.
If Sykes had said anything at that moment, Domino honestly thought that she'd have stepped forward and killed him herself, right then and there. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides and her vision blurred with tears as she remembered how Ramirez had broken down at the sight of one particular body. His brother-in-law, he'd told them, and then explained how his sister, the young man's wife, had been nine months pregnant when P.M.E.'s thugs had come to their house in the middle of the night.
It had been stupid of Ramirez to take this job, the coolly logical part of her mind pointed out. Stupid and unprofessional, doomed from the beginning. As a general rule, becoming personally involved got you--or others--killed.
But she understood his reasons. She would probably have done it herself. And the part she'd played in bringing this whole awful mess to its inevitable end left her feeling so filthy that she wondered if she'd ever be clean again. What's wrong with you? a small, disgusted voice asked. It wasn't as if she'd never seen anything like this before. Traveling with Logan, she'd seen worse. But she couldn't get last night and what Ramirez had told them out of her mind. She'd tried to sleep, on the trip back to Guadalajara, but even when she had managed to doze off, the images in her dreams had been so terrible that sleep had been anything but restful.
"If you'd wanted thugs," Bridge was saying to Sykes, "you should have hired thugs." His voice was crisp and calm, not reflecting in the least the storm of emotions she saw in his dark eyes. "God knows there are plenty for hire, out there--"
"We wanted professionals--"
"Shut up before I rip out your vocal cords, you bastard," Bridge said levelly, and Sykes gaped at him for a moment. "We are professionals. Professionals with contacts better than you'd probably imagine of a group of 'hired killers'." Sykes opened his mouth to say something, but Bridge continued inexorably. "We will use those contacts to make sure your activities here come to the attention of people who can do something about it. Those people are just as professional, just as efficient as we are, and once they're finished, I don't think your employers will have much of a company left." Bridge leaned towards Sykes and gave him a cold, cold smile. "Have a nice day, you murdering asshole."
As soon as they were safely in the elevator and it was moving down towards the ground floor of the office building where P.M.E. was quartered, Domino looked up at Bridge inquisitively. "What people were you talking about?"
He smiled thinly. "Better you don't know. Safer, at least. Let's just say they take a very dim view of crap like this."
She raised an eyebrow, but didn't push. SHIELD? she wondered, but put her curiosity aside for the time being. The tension in the elevator was incredible. Hammer was staring fixedly at the wall, but Domino could read the distress beneath his determined mask. He'd been very quiet, ever since they'd found out the truth about this contract. Grizzly stood next to him, fidgeting uncomfortably as he looked from Hammer to Cable, who stood like a statue on his other side. His dispassionate expression was every bit as much of a facade as Hammer's.
"Guys," Bridge said quietly, as the elevator continued downwards. "We can't leave it like this." There was honest warning in his voice, and Domino agreed. They had to thrash this out between them, or, at the very least, their efficiency as a unit would suffer. Worst-case scenario, lingering mistrust and anger would get someone killed.
"Who said I had any intention of leaving it?" Cable asked quietly.
Hammer closed his eyes, pain flashing across his face for just a moment. Domino bit her lip. "Cable," he said in a voice that almost broke. "I didn't know, I swear--"
"This isn't the place," Cable said, just as calmly.
They rode the rest of the way down in silence.
***
HOTEL MERIDA
8:01 pm
"You knew that he didn't know," Domino said, suddenly sure. "Right from when it went bad. That's why you didn't say a word to him until he started--"
"Does that excuse him?" Cable snapped. "Does that excuse any of us? What's that saying, ignorance of the law is no excuse?" He tossed back the rest of his drink and filled the glass again.
The bottle was almost gone, and she was still only working on her second glass. She was starting to get a little worried. Even for someone his size, this was a dangerous amount of alcohol. Tentatively, she reached for the bottle, but he jerked it back out of her reach.
"I'm fine," he growled, giving her a baleful look.
"Nate, you don't drink, you're not used to it--and even if you were, this is still a little on the excessive side." She regarded the three empty tequila bottles, shaking her head. "You are going to feel like shit warmed over in the morning, you know that? If you're lucky."
"Go to hell."
Domino fought down the urge to break one of the empty bottles over his head, to see if the direct approach worked. But his temper seemed a little chancy, and she didn't want to risk it. Getting into a fight with him would be futile, not to mention possibly very embarassing for her. Give her a gun and some breathing room and she'd take on anyone without a second thought, but going hand-to-hand with Cable would be stupid. Even in this state, he could probably pound her into the ground like a tent peg if he put his mind to it. "You really can be a bastard at times, Nathan," she said conversationally.
He gave a harsh bark of laughter. "Oh, believe me, Dom, I know EXACTLY what you think of me--"
"Oh? How's that?" she asked, baring her teeth at him. But he didn't answer, and she decided to let it go. Keep him talking, she told herself firmly. The more he talks, the less he drinks. "What law were you talking about, Nathan?" she asked thoughtfully.
"What?" he asked distractedly, filling up his glass again.
"What law were we all ignoring, Nathan?" she repeated patiently.
He blinked at her. "Law--Dom, what are you talking about?" he asked, and then swallowed, a peculiar expression growing on his face. "I feel--strange."
"Never mind the law. This whole thing's really touched a nerve, hasn't it?" Domino asked, shifting a little at the sneaking suspicion that she was taking advantage of him here. But what he'd called her 'rampaging curiosity' was screaming 'full speed ahead!' "What P.M.E. was doing, I mean--"
"Wasn't right," Cable muttered, swaying a bit.
"I agree totally. But G.W. didn't have to deck ME," she pointed out. "That's the only time I've seen you lose it like that, Cable. Why did you react so strongly? Empathizing is one thing, but that was something else entirely--"
He suddenly straightened and glared at her. "You'd like to know, wouldn't you?" he snarled almost disgustedly. "You figure 'hey, he's drunk out of his skull, why not try and find a few answers to my questions while I've got the opportunity?'" For just a second, there was an expression of such searing pain on his face that she was as rocked by it as if he'd slapped her. Then, the cold expression descended again, and he looked away from her, his mouth twisting bitterly. "Be careful what you wish for, Dom. The truth's an ugly thing, most of the time."
"You think I don't know that?" she parried quickly, feeling her expression settle into a bleak mask for a moment. "We all have our ugly secrets, Nathan." Amazingly enough, that measuring expression was back on his face as he looked at her. She bristled under his scrutiny. "Did you never wonder how I ended up with Logan?" she asked acidly.
"Probably for the same reason you ended up in this life," he said in a curiously neutral voice. "The same reason we all did. The lives we'd rather have, the places we'd rather be--they're gone. Ashes in the wind." This time, his laugh sounded curiously desolate. "Literally, in my case."
"What do you mean?" she asked, tentatively. But he looked away, staring down into the depths of his glass as if it held an answer to some question he desperately wanted to resolve. "Nathan--"
"Just drop it, all right?" he said quietly. "Please?"
She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. "All right." You really were trying to take advantage of him, you know, her conscience said sternly. "I--apologize," she said, without really thinking about it.
"Oath, Dom, you don't have anything to apologize for," he said wearily, still staring into his glass. They were both silent for a long moment. "I don't blame Hammer," he finally said, abruptly. "I don't expect him to see to the heart of things. Insight's not his strong suit. It was my failure, Dom--as usual." A muscle along his jaw twitched as he raised his glass.
Her eyes narrowed. "Admittedly, I've only know you and the rest for a few months, but I haven't noticed that you have a habit of screwing up, Nate--" Quite the opposite, actually. Even in four months, she'd realized that there was no one else, except Logan, who she'd rather have at her back in a fight. And she was still in awe of his planning skills. Strategy, tactics--he was so good it was almost scary. It was exactly what Logan had said she needed to learn, the reason he'd suggested she join a group. She hoped that he'd let himself admit, someday, that she'd made the right choice in joining up with the Pack.
"Guess that proves I know you better than you know me," he said with a ghost of a smile. "I don't blame Hammer for the way the mission went bad," he continued. "What happened afterwards, though, is another matter entirely."
***
HOTEL MERIDA, ROOM #315
AUGUST 27th, 10:12 am
"No one's blaming you here, Hammer," Bridge repeated, his tone just as patient as it had been the first five times he'd said the exact same thing. "You don't have to be so defensive."
That, however, sounded a little irritated, Domino reflected glumly. Upon checking into the hotel, they'd gathered here in Bridge's room to 'talk things over', as he'd so delicately put it. They weren't making much headway. To put it mildly.
"Oh, really?" Hammer snapped, pacing restlessly across the room. He shot a furious look at Cable, who hadn't said two words to him since they'd left P.M.E.'s offices. Domino gave Cable a measuring look. Sitting over in a chair in the corner, he might as well have been a statue for all the interest he was showing in the conversation. "Maybe you don't, G.W.--"
"Did I say anything, Hammer?" Cable asked in a level voice, still staring fixedly at the opposite wall.
"You didn't have to, damn it! It's perfectly clear how you feel! I arranged the contract, so it's my fault, right? That's what you're all thinking--"
"Sounds like you're the one with the guilty conscience," Domino muttered. Hammer whirled on her, and for a moment, she thought he was going to launch into the usual 'wait until you've been with the Pack for long enough to know what you're talking about before you open your mouth' speech, but he didn't. He broke eye contact with her almost immediately, and Domino realized that she hadn't been too far off the mark.
"The blame goes enough ways on this that there's not much point in discussing it," Bridge said in his 'let's-be-rational' voice.
"Speak for yourself!" Hammer spat. "Personally, I think this is all Ramirez's fault--"
Cable stiffened, and his left eye started to glow again. Always a warning sign, Domino had noticed. "Excuse me?" he asked coldly, a dangerous edge to the question.
"You heard me!" Hammer tossed over his shoulder. "If he hadn't been out there fucking around, trying to play the knight in shining armor--"
"Whoa, Ham--" Grizzly said, looking distressed. "That's not fair--"
"No?" Hammer said furiously, whirling on Grizzly. "You can't honestly think there's a way to defend what he did--"
"You want to shut up while you still have all your teeth?" Cable snarled, on his feet so quickly that Hammer actually took a step backwards for a moment. *Oh, shit, here we go again,* Domino thought a little wildly as Hammer straightened, glaring at Cable. "What Ramirez tried to do was a good thing, Hammer--even someone like YOU should be able to see that!" Out of the corner of her eye, Domino saw Bridge sink his face into his hands for a moment.
Hammer's expression hardened. "Care to explain what you mean by that?" he asked in a low voice. Domino got the absurd impression that he was almost relieved that Cable had thrown down the gauntlet, so to speak. He could feel free to lash out now, she thought bleakly; Cable had handed him the excuse on a silver platter.
Cable either didn't see that, or didn't care. Domino figured it was probably the latter. He might have seemed to regain his composure for a while, but she honestly didn't think he'd calmed down all that much from when he'd been ready to murder Sykes. "Fine!" he snarled, his eye blazing as he drew himself up to his full height. There wasn't THAT much difference in size between him and Hammer, but Hammer seemed dwarfed by Cable in that moment, his defensiveness and anger an insignificant thing compared to the fury Cable was--emanating, for lack of a better word. "You're using 'professionalism' as an excuse to cover the fact that you have no sense of responsibility to anything but your flonqing bank account! You were only upset about this because you didn't know how it's going to affect the Pack--affect you! You don't care about Ramirez, or what P.M.E.'s been doing to those people--"
"Nate, that's being a little harsh!" G.W. snapped, stepping between the two of them.
"G.W., stay out of this!" Hammer growled, and then turned back to Cable. "Damn it, Nate, Ramirez turned himself into nothing better than a vigilante! We're mercenaries, not--crusaders! If he'd gone off by himself, that would've been one thing, but the Harriers were stupid enough to let him talk them into getting involved, too! And so we ended up fighting friends, because Ramirez had a fucking grudge and didn't stop to think about what the consequences might be! As far as I'm concerned, this IS his fault! He started it--not us!"
Cable's eyes widened. "You can say that, knowing what was happening?" he asked in an oddly labored voice, as if he was having trouble breathing. There was a flash of terrible vulnerability in his eyes, and Domino half-rose, instinctively beginning to respond to it. "Hammer--" It sounded almost like a plea.
"For God's sake, Nathan, get your priorities straight!" Hammer raved, seizing on that moment of weakness like a shark who'd found blood in the water. "Stow the personal garbage--I don't know what's eating you, and I don't particularly care! Why the hell should we be concerned about a bunch of stupid Mexican farmers? If they were smart, they'd knuckle under and make the best of the situation! They're idiots, to think they can fight this--you want my opinion, they brought all of it on themselves!"
He didn't mean it, Domino knew. He was casting around for something, any justification that could alleviate his own feelings of guilt about the whole thing. Hammer could be a bastard, but he wasn't inhuman. Cable surely had to see that, she thought in the moment of shattering silence that followed Hammer's last flung accusation. He wouldn't take him seriously, she told herself as she started to look over at him--
The burning hatred in his eyes as he looked at Hammer, the sheer, unadulterated contempt, nearly staggered her. He spat something in that weirdly musical language of his--by the tone, some sort of profanity--and, pushing past G.W., left the room. The door slammed behind him so hard that Domino winced.
That went well-- She looked over at G.W., who was regarding Hammer with a sort of weary disgust.
"Do you ever think before you open your mouth?" he asked coldly. Hammer started to say something, but G.W. shook his head warningly. "Not one more word until you've heard what I have to say," he snapped, and then looked over at Grizzly and Domino. "I think you two should probably go."
Domino started to protest, but Grizzly grabbed her by the arm, and ushered her, gently but firmly, out of the room. She wrenched free of his grasp as soon as he'd closed the door behind them, and gave him a furious look.
"I don't appreciate being manhandled!"
"Trust me," Grizzly said in an unusual sober voice. "You didn't want to stay."
"Why?" She hurled the question at him, and was almost gratified to see him wince. "More secrets that none of you want the 'probationary' member in on yet?"
"No," Grizzly said grimly. When she continued to glare at him, waiting for an explanation, he sighed. "G.W.--puts up with what goes on between Nate and Hammer, most of the time. But when one of them crosses the line, he usually sets them down pretty hard."
Domino cursed under her breath. "And which one of them crossed the line this time?" she demanded, somewhat facetiously. Sometimes I wish I'd listened to Logan and found a nice, sane group of people to work with--
Grizzly gave a curiously unamused snort. "You ever see Nate walk away from an argument before, Dom?" he asked almost sadly.
***
HOTEL MERIDA
8:08 pm
"Why did you walk out?" Domino asked casually.
"None of your flonqing business," Cable growled. She raised an eyebrow, and he looked away, staring down into his glass. "I would have done something--irrevocable, if I'd stayed." His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "I would have enjoyed it, mind you--"
"I get the picture," she said with a sigh. "He didn't mean it, you know."
"I know nothing of the sort," he said coldly, stiffening.
"Cable, he was just trying to--"
"Listen, I'm not in the mood to hear anyone apologizing for Hammer!" Cable snapped, swaying again. "And I don't know why you'd ever defend him, Dom. He's been a flonqing bastard to you for four solid months--"
"Maybe because you're being unfair to him," Domino said levelly. He gave her a disgusted look, but she continued calmly. "Maybe because you're letting whatever's 'eating you', as he put it, drive you into lashing out at the closest available target--and to drinking yourself into a coma when there's no target handy."
"That's ridiculous," he said through gritted teeth.
"I don't think so. I think that's exactly what you're doing."
"And how the flonqing hell would you know?" he blazed.
The smile she managed was somewhat twisted. "Because I've done it myself, more than once," she admitted freely. "Although I only TRY to drink myself into a stupor. Curse of an iron head and all that--" He gave her an uncomprehending look, and she sighed. "Seriously, Nate, what makes you think you have it any more together than the rest of us? It doesn't hurt to admit that the world gets a little hard to deal with, once in a while."
His eyes narrowed. "I am not giving up!" he almost spat, his left eye glowing like balefire.
"Whoa!" she said, leaning back slightly in surprise, raising a defensive hand. "I didn't say you were!" She wondered, a little wildly, how he'd managed to misinterpret what she'd said to that extent.
"Let me make this clear," he grated, still looking furious. "I'm going to do something about this. I just--haven't figured out what, yet," he finished, the intensity fading and an almost forlorn note entering his voice.
She filled up her glass again, mostly to buy herself time to think. Taking a sip, she eyed him speculatively. "Mistakes can't be undone, you know," she finally said, a little more brusquely than she'd intended. "Pretending you can just 'fix' things won't do anything but break your heart." Her eyes stung, and she rubbed at them angrily. Okay, maybe I've had a little too much tequila, too. But this whole subject brought back memories she'd thought she'd dealt with years ago, of her own fumbling, childish attempts to avenge, if not repair, the life she'd lost. Thank God Logan had been there to rescue her before she got in too deeply over her head. The experience hadn't been one she'd like to repeat, but it had taught her to pick her battles; a valuable lesson, if one that had come at a particularly high cost.
"Mistakes can be undone," Cable said in a strangely remote voice. "It's only a question of whether they should be--" Then he blinked, visibly shaking himself, and gave her a searching look. She blanked her expression and met his gaze with a raised eyebrow, hoping he hadn't caught that moment of weakness on her part. An unreadable expression flashed across his face and was gone again before she could decipher it.
"Do you honestly believe that, or are you just trying to convince yourself that there IS something you can do?" Domino said defensively, before he could say anything else. "The world's a pretty lousy place, Nate. People--good people, innocent people, die. You can't save them all--"
His left hand closed spasmodically around his glass, which shattered. His left eye blazing, his face set in an expression of such anguished fury that Domino flinched despite herself, Cable didn't even seem to notice. "If you EVER say that to me again--EVER!--I swear, you'll wish you'd never heard of the Pack!" he almost roared at her.
"Just like a man," she said bitingly, straightening and meeting his eyes without a moment's hesitation. "When all else fails, win the argument through sheer volume." Inwardly, she was wondering exactly what it was she'd said that had set him off. That he can't save them all? she thought hesitantly. But why would that push him over the edge? That was just reality, and she'd never seen him as overly idealistic.
He glared at her for a moment longer, but then the anger just seemed to drain out of him, like water through a sieve. "Go away," he muttered almost desperately, his shoulders slumping as he turned away from her. The bartender, with an expression that suggested he thought he was taking his life in his hands, scuttled up with a dustbin and small hand broom to remove the broken glass. Cable didn't even seem to register his presence.
"What is it?" she asked him gently, too concerned to worry about being irritated with him for biting her head off. "Come on, Nate, whatever it is, it can't hurt to talk about it--"
"Oh, that's rich, coming from you," he said bitterly. "You, who wouldn't even explain what all that business with Creed was about back in Toronto--"
She stiffened. "I thought Creed said quite enough for the two of us," she said harshly. There was no way she was getting into that particular topic, not with Cable, not with anyone in the Pack. They wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand.
"You'd be surprised," Cable muttered.
Domino felt her eyes widen in startlement. "W-What?" she stammered. She hadn't said that out loud, had she?
His eyes flickered to her for a moment, almost nervously. "About what Creed said, I mean. I think. I've--" He blinked, shaking his head. "I'm drunk. Don't listen to me."
Domino caught herself tapping her fingers agitatedly on the bar, and stopped, biting her lip in irritation. He had to have been just answering her earlier question, she told herself firmly, from when she'd asked him whether it would hurt to talk about it. That was it. That HAD to be it. What other answer could there be?
Do you really believe that, or are you trying to convince yourself? a voice asked her in a snide echo of yet another question she'd asked Cable.
"All right," she said abruptly, forcing the problem to the back of her mind for now. "You're drunk. If you're not going to tell me why you're so upset, would you at least tell me why you chose this way of expressing it?"
He shrugged almost apathetically, but there was a definite tension in his posture. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."
***
HOTEL MERIDA
4:43 pm
Cable stepped into the restaurant, lightly scanning the area to make sure Hammer was nowhere in the vicinity. Nodding wearily to himself as he caught no trace of the familiar psi-imprint, he went over to the bar and sat down.
He'd finally decided to leave his room--it had begun to seem awfully confining after the first few hours, like the walls were closing in on him or something. Being alone with your own thoughts wasn't always a good thing. He'd tried to meditate, to clear his mind and achieve at least some semblance of calm, but it had been utterly futile. If anything, it had only made him more tense. The hours of solitude should have allowed him to gain at least some distance from the events of the last twenty-four hours, but they were just as immediate--just as painful as they'd been in the first place.
So many similarities-- A different time, different people--oath, an entirely different world, really, and yet some things still remained the same. The powerful were still exploiting--still brutalizing--the weak. And people like Hammer were still writing it off as inevitable. The way of the world.
Cable swallowed, remembering what he'd seen in Ramirez's mind. Images that had almost leapt from the other man's mind to his own, scenes of violence and grief and suffering--so much the same, Cable thought again, a dull pain in his chest. They could have been moments from his own past, scenes from that horrible year after his Clan had been crushed in battle--when the Canaanite army had been set loose on the lands the Clan Chosen had protected for so long. Set loose to murder and rape and destroy, anything they wanted so long as they left no one alive who had dared to give their alleigance to the Clan, dared to dream of freedom--
He understood Ramirez better than Bridge or the rest of the Pack would ever know. Hadn't he taken on the mantle of avenger, once the remnants of his Clan had broken him out of prison? With the memory of all the death he'd seen driving him--Stryfe and Parridian Haight's idea of fitting punishment, that he should witness what his 'treason' against the Canaanite Order had cost those who'd believed in him--he'd thirsted for revenge. And he hadn't settled for blowing up equipment and attacking supply convoys, as Ramirez had done. No, he'd waded in Canaanite blood, and relished every moment of it. He'd lost himself in slaughter, and, as much as he might like to pretend otherwise, he certainly hadn't limited himself to military targets--
I have no right to be arguing morality with anyone, he thought bleakly, shame churning within him. I left 'moral' behind years ago.
But Ramirez hadn't. His actions weren't at all questionable, in Cable's mind. He'd seen injustice, and carefully gone about putting a stop to it. He hadn't caught any innocents in the crossfire, had shed no blood other than that of P.M.E.'s own security guards.
We were on the wrong side, Cable thought desolately. We let ourselves be used--how could I have missed seeing it? He hadn't deep-scanned Sykes or the security guards--he was running on the ragged edge lately when it came to his powers, and he'd been satisfied with what he'd seen in their body language and read in their voices. Stupid--careless--how could I have let my responsibilities slide like that? He wanted to throw back his head and scream out his frustration. He wanted Sykes there, within reach--or P.M.E.'s security guards all lined up in a neat row and a gun with a full clip in his hand. This is my fault, all of it--not Ramirez, not Hammer. Mine.
"Hello, sir," the bartender said, and Cable looked up at him dully, too tired and sick at heart to snarl at the man for the interruption. "Can I get you something?"
Cable started to tell him no, but then hesitated. What was that phrase Bridge was always using? 'Drowning your sorrows?' He skimmed the bartender's mind lightly, frowning.
"Umm--tequila, I guess," he said, randomly picking a variety of alcohol. Oath, it wasn't as if he had any basis for comparison. Maybe I should start with the letter 'a' and work my way through the alphabet--
"A single, sir?" The bartender gave him what was probably supposed to be a friendly smile. "If you don't mind me saying, you look like you've had a hard day. A double, maybe?" It was a joke, but it kindled an odd feeling inside Cable.
"No," he said, recklessly. "A bottle."
to be continued...
[FOOTER]