Those who know, will understand.  Those who don't know, don't need to understand.  This fic isn't what it started out as, but it turned out being what it wanted to be.

Having said that, it's just a fic.

---

21st September
by elfin


It was getting hot now in the reddened darkness.  "How long do we have, Kitt?"

His partner's voice was apologetically soft.  "You have just over three hours of oxygen left, Michael."

Three hours.  Time enough for help to reach them.  It had to be.  "What about you?"

"I don't believe I'm going to last that long.  I'm sorry."

Tears blossomed in Michael's eyes.  "What do you have to be sorry for?  I'm the one who landed us in this mess."

"I'm sorry I failed you.  And I'm sorry I won't be here for you."

He didn't want to think that he could lose Kitt.  "You didn't fail me.  I failed us."

"I was unable to complete the manoeuvre."

And whose fault was that?  "You warned me, Partner, you told me you weren't sure and I ignored you, as usual."

There was a plea in Kitt's quiet words.  "Don't take the blame for this, Michael."  It was difficult to accept just how damaged his partner was, his voice was as smooth as it always was.  Previously when he was injured his broken speech was what had given his pain away.  But his vocalisation was unaffected this time around, and he was more badly hurt that Michael cared to think about.  "I don't want my last memories of you to be unhappy ones."  

The tears broke free and ran over his cheeks.  "Oh, Kitt, don't say that."

"The cascade failure in my CPU is systematically destroying me."  The simple fact wasn't delivered steadily, Michael could hear the slightly tremble.  Kitt was scared.  Like Michael, he didn't want to die here, under however many tonnes of rubble - a fifty storey building demolished right on top of them.  They didn't know if the distress signal they'd sent just as the dust had settled had got out, had reached Devon and Bonnie.  Kitt was unable to send another one; he couldn't reach the communication port on his CPU.

More than dying himself, it was Kitt's impending death that frightened Michael.

"Is there nothing you can do…?"

He was misunderstood.  "I've calculated that if I shut myself down now, Michael, I could give you an approximate forty-five minutes of extra time.  Or at least, I think that's right.  I should do it."

"No!  No, don't you dare."  He shook his head, fingers hovering just an inch from the dashboard.  "Don't, Kitt.  Please."

"Michael, my primary function…."

"Don't give me that primary function stuff!  I don't want to hear it.  You're not shutting down and that's an order."  Silence met him.  "Kitt?"  No….  "Kitt!"

"I'm here."  He sounded defeated, and it broke Michael's heart to hear it.  He trailed his fingertips over the voice panel.

"Good.  Just stay with me as long as you can."

"But Michael, if I extend your life it'll buy you some more time."

"Kitt!  I said no.  End of discussion."  But something had lodged in his brain.  An idea which wouldn't let up.  "Kitt… why would you shutting yourself down extend my life when I'm running low on oxygen?"

There was a definite uplift to the AI's tone when he explained, "I would give more power to the air filtration systems.  As it is, my using the energy to remain online is wasteful."

But that wasn't what was going through Michael's head.  "So, turning that on its head… if you were to take power from the air filtration systems… you could extend your own life?"

"Even if that were possible, Michael, it isn't something I could do."

"Why isn't it possible?"  He didn't get a response.  "Kitt?"

"I can't endanger your life."  

He was sure that didn't answer his question.  "What if I made it an order?"

"You can't order me to change my programming, Michael."  There was sadness but no regret in the words.  "It isn't something I can do, nor would I even if I could."

"Kitt…."

"Michael, please.  I can be rebuilt, recreated."

"Reborn?"

"If you like."

"But it won't be you, will it?  Won't be your memories, your development…."

"If anything of the memory banks survive they can be loaded into the next…"

"But it won't be you!  I've got a brother, Kitt!  My parents had another child.  It doesn't mean he is me, doesn't mean we're the same!"

"It is a different scenario, Michael."  Spoken with infinite patience.  "My code can be replicated, my knowledge relearned…"

"But it's you I love, Kitt!"  The blurted confession at least stopped the AI's protests.  "It wouldn't be the same."

"I don't know what to say."

"Now there's a first!"  Smiling at last, Michael leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the gull wing steering wheel, crossing his hands on the flat centre.  "Neither of us are going anywhere, Kitt.  They'll find us in time; we just need to hang on."

~

ONE HOUR, TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES LATER

"…I swore, Kitt, as I knelt beside him and watched him bleed to death right in front of me… I would never have another partner.  From there on in I would work alone."

"I've been very lucky that you decided to give it one more try."

Michael smiled.  "Yeah, well… you're not exactly a run-of-the-mill partner, you know.  You have a lot of amazing qualities which frankly make me the lucky one."

"Sometimes I think you need a human partner instead of a computer on wheels.  There are places I can't go, Michael."

"Maybe.  But I've learnt to take care of myself under those circumstances.  Besides, if you weren't you, we would definitely be having this conversation somewhere a lot higher than this, or a lot lower, depending on how the powers that be view my life."

"The powers that be, Michael?"

"God and the Devil, Kitt."

"I find it hard to understand human religious beliefs.  There is no translation for them for a computer."

"Don't think you're alone in that, Kitt.  I'm not sure I understand either.  I'm not one hundred percent sure I believe.  But I made a deal with God one time.  He kept his side of the bargain, and I've always kept mine."

"What was his side of the bargain?"

"To give someone back to us, someone who was badly hurt, who was dying."

"And your side?"

"To not write him off completely.  I didn't promise to go to church, to say my prayers, but I did promise to keep him in mind, to think about it now and again."

Kitt seemed to think about that.  His tone was contemplative, curious even, when he asked, "How difficult is that promise to keep day to day?  How difficult is it now?"

Michael dropped his forehead against the side window.  "Right now, Kitt, it at least gives me a higher being to curse at, even if it's probably a fictional one."  His answer lost him in his own thoughts for a couple of minutes, and when he refocused on the dash, he realised his partner had fallen quiet.

"Kitt?"  Nothing.  "Kitt?"  Sitting up, Michael touched the voice panel.  "Kitt, talk to me!"  Suddenly the whole car shuddered, shifted sideways just a little, and Michael could hear the sounds of tonnes of rubble being moved.  "Kitt!  They found us, Pal!  Kitt?  Please, Partner, answer me.  Kitt?  Kitt!"

~

TWO DAYS LATER

She looked utterly wiped out but her eyes were wide with the caffeine high and she was smiling.

"That's one very, very lucky AI," the older man at her side told Michael with a slightly less manic expression.

Michael looked at Bonnie.  "He's shaken up, slightly more… thoughtful than when I spoke to him last.  But he's okay."

Relief, with the intensity of hard drugs, flooded through him.  Arms around her, he wanted to hug every technician, robotics expert, neural networks genius and mechanic that walked through the doors.  "Can I see him?"

"Sure.  His CPU still isn't back in the car, but give me time to catch an hour's sleep and we'll have him back to his old self."

"Thank you."  He'd never meant it quite as direct from the heart before.  "Thank you so much."

#

"Kitt?"

"Michael!"

His name, that greeting, one word and he knew it was going to be all right.  Dropping into the chair in front of the workstation where the AI's CPU was safely contained in a static-free, clean environment, Michael couldn't help the stupid grin on his face or the tears of joy in his eyes.  "Hello, Partner."

"You're all right."

"I'm absolutely fine, thanks to you."

"I didn't do anything.  In fact, if I recall correctly, I - as Doctor Vorman put it - pegged out before we were rescued."

"Pegged out?"  Michael wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.  "Doesn't sound like you, Partner."  It felt so good to be able to say that.  For over an hour, while they'd cleared the ruins of the office block from the car, he'd sat in the cabin and cried, honestly believing that Kitt was gone, lost to him forever.  The damage hadn't looked physically damaged in any way, but it had only taken one glance at his expression for Bonnie to start barking orders at her army of technicians to get Kitt out of the engine compartment and into the Semi.

"Just an addition to my vocabulary."

Nodding, Michael found he couldn't speak for a moment, and not for the first time he wished for some way to touch his partner more than the body or steering wheel of the car, more than the black box that sat before him now.

"Michael?"

He swallowed.  "Sorry, Kitt."

"You're upset."  His partner's gentle voice seemed to reach for him.  "Is everything all right?"

"It is now.  Everything's all right now."  He knew he was still convincing himself, but he desperately wanted to be convincing for Kitt.

"Something in your tone makes me doubt that, Michael.  But it will be all right.  We will be.  Trust me."

"Believe me.  I feel a lot better just hearing you say that."  He thought he felt a smile and smiled in return.

"Michael?  Would you do me a favour?"

"For you, Kitt, anything."

"Would you stay for a while?  Being blind isn't the most comfortable of feelings and I'd rather not… be alone."

He hadn't realised.  "Of course I'll stay, Kitt."  He almost bit back the words but at last minute he let them be between them.  "I'll stay forever."

It was the first promise he'd ever made that he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he would keep.