Personal Original Fiction Space
IT CAME UP: Five Times Rachelle Didn't Love Justus & One Time She Did — Rachelle & Justus
- It wasn’t something team members did often, stop and evaluate how close they were, but in the constant line of fire, it came up so to speak, and it came up again when the Database was watching through the hacked security cameras as Defender and Sear mowed down a stream of hostiles giving chase to the impossible target of Shift heading for where Kismet would step any moment. It came up when she saw a stray bullet tear into his side, saw him go down—bloodily, felt the cool impassivity of too much experience with this sort of thing and kept doing her job because it was the only way to maybe get him out alive.
- Sear’s mouth was moving, and so was her arm as she shoved it under Defender’s, but she couldn’t shoot a semi-automatic with one hand.
- Kismet rocked forward slightly, barely more than an intense breath, but waited, waited, watching the computer screen with her.
- The Database imagined she could feel the lick of intensifying heat as Sear’s eyes burned darker and redder and hostiles started going down smoldering instead of shot. Shift hit the rendezvous and dove under Sear’s cover.
- Kismet’s hands parted, lightning-like streams flickering between her hands, then stepped and a portal opened between the two locations. Shift slid inside and Sear shoved behind her, taking Defender with her. Kismet slammed the portal shut, halving the gun of a hostile that close on their tails.
- And suddenly, the Database could move again, could be human, could reach out and check Justus over herself. He was Justus again, not Defender, and breathing ragged blood out of his mouth. She didn’t have time to wait for Meld, so she grabbed the entire lot of healing gifts she had running, chugging through her system, and used them one after another after another. She poured her life into his, she prodded his own body’s regeneration, she knit together the broken blood vessels, the damaged organs—she healed him in a way any one healer never could. Only five seconds after five seconds after five seconds of so many stolen powers lined up in a row, and then he pulled away from her, studying her to make sure she hadn’t compromised her own health.
- Shift shoved herself to her feet, satisfied her team member was alive and would be, and ordered the Database, “Work clean-up.”
- The Database obeyed. Justus turned away, stood, and did his own clean up.
- If the Database was the kind of woman to love a man, she would love him for that, the ability to do what he needed to do. She was the kind of woman to love and sacrifice for her own, but as she glanced over to see Shift handling him, handling her team, she mused to herself briefly that Justus wasn’t hers. He was Shift’s. She couldn’t really say she minded.



