I can't grant you any wishes, I won't promise you the stars (for Halcy)

[askthelookout]

They rode for several hours. It was slow going, and after the initial wash of activity when they parted, the little ka-tet fell into an uneasy silence, the sort that resisted any attempt to break it. Roland rode at the head of the posse, his face settled back into stiff, unyielding lines, his back straight and his shoulders back, like a statue carved in flesh.

Cuthbert, for his part, rode at the back of the group, acting as rearguard. The smile he'd worn earlier seemed to ebb away with every step they took, and by the time they were out of sight of Gilead, he was as stonily silent as his dinh, looking around at the ruined landscape they rode through, his dark eyes sharp and alert. He didn't speak to Kaine, or to anyone.

When the sun began to go down, Roland called a halt, raising one hand and reining in his horse. "This is the best shelter we're like to fine. Bert, Will, set up camp. Alfred, you'll take first watch. Wake James at midnight. Percival, Jacob, food and water are yours. I'll see to the horses."

With little more than a few words to each other, the gunslingers set about their assigned tasks with the brisk efficiency of long practice. The silence lasted a half-hour more, and then, as they settled in around the little fire with a pot of thin stew starting to bubble, some thin attempts at conversation began. A tobacco pouch was passed, then a half-empty flask of graf, and Bert came to sit beside Kaine as he rolled a smoke.

"How're you holding together?" he asked her, with a sidelong little smile, and proffered the tobacco.

Comments

[askthelookout]

"Aye, somewhere." Bert turned his head to look at her, breaking off his animated retelling of a long and involved joke about a turtle and three horses. "It's in my purse. I can hunt it down, if you need it."

Roland, for his part, just nodded, hunkering down on the other side of the fire and reaching for the proffered tobacco pouch.

[apassingafternoon]

A turtle. And three horses. Only Bert could tell something like that, and only Bert could make it sound believable when it was probably a load of shit.

"I might." She looked over at Roland, her gaze nearly as intense as his could be at its worst. "Hey," She probably hadn't needed to say it, Roland would be aware enough to realize she was speaking to him. "There has to be something you'd want to see, right? About Christian or Wei or Nathan. Anything."

Her hands moved rapidly now, it was the only sign of her nerves.

[toweredingly]

Roland was quiet for a long moment. "There's nothing," he said shortly, at last. It wasn't exactly true. There was plenty he'd want to see, about all those men and more besides. About Nariko, or Kaine herself, for that matter.

But he remembered all too well the way the pink had sucked at him, dragged him in. Striking Nariko. Seeing his own reflection in the pink glass and not recognising it.

He'd learnt his lesson about seeing-stones.

"There's nothing," he said again, but he dug into his coat pocket and pulled out his half of the stone, tossing it across the fire to her. "And I'd caution you not to fuck with it. We've got enough problems, without bringing magic into it."

[apassingafternoon]

"What an almost-reasonable answer, even if you're probably lying." She caught the other piece easily, and set her work down to turn it in both her hands. "And I suppose if this was made with as much malice and hatred as that thing you had, I'd listen to. But magic just as much good and harm in equal turns as your guns, Roland."

She made an easy gesture with her free hand. "Besides, I don't exactly remember what I'm supposed to say to get us into Kyrat, and this is the only way I know to see it again. And I don't quite know about you but I'm going to do everything necessary to get back there, especially if Amelia really did send that crazy Walter Dim guy there." So whether he much liked it or not it had to be done, in a sense. That didn't take away from the fact that, in a sense, she'd been testing him, but that was beside the point.

There was no reason to make Roland uncomfortable though, Kaine held her hand out to Bert for the other piece, and she'd stand once she got it anyway.

[askthelookout]

"What magic is," Bert said with a little shrug, passing over his half of the stone without hesitation now Roland had made his position clear, "is a complication. Roland's right. Good or bad, we don't need more complications." There was only a hint of dryness to his voice, and for once, he seemed almost serious. Still, when she stood, he stood too, putting aside his empty bowl. "Mind if I come with you?"

He trusted her more than Roland did, but if anything, he trusted magic even less. And he felt a deep need to be by her side, if anything should go wrong with whatever she was doing.

[apassingafternoon]

"As long as you don't spend the whole time thinking we'll be eaten." Their concern might have felt sweet, or at least valid, if their only source of sight seeing stones wasn't an obnoxiously pink one that was clearly evil. With both pieces in her hands she tried to ease them together and, except for the fine pieces that were still lost in her world, they fit perfectly.

"Since you're not being a worrywart, though, there is something I'd like you to see." For the third time that night Kaine put a bit of space between herself and the camp. It wasn't so far off that they'd really be out of earshot, but they wouldn't get the full effect of anything.

"You both worry so much that it's no wonder you have to be all tall, dark, and brooding."

[askthelookout]

"Well, that doesn't add up." Bert pulled a face, scuffing his boot against the dirt. "Roland, I'll grant. But Alain's short and blonde and smiley, and he worries the most of any of us."

[apassingafternoon]

"Alain isn't here, and is therefore exempt from the comment." She held the two pieces in one arm so that she could pull out her knife and gently knick her own forefinger, she pressed on the small wound to let it gather before rubbing it along one uneven surface. With that accomplished and the cut on her finger healing almost immediately she pushed them together and held while she looked at him.

"You can't tell me that I don't have a reason to comment when even Roland thinks I should use a gun. I almost want to show him what happened last time, but it probably wouldn't be very funny to him."

Then again nothing much was funny to Roland Deschain. But in the time it took her to finish that comment the little crystal glowed, faintly healing itself through Kaine's blood.

"There we go! Come on, let's sit."

[askthelookout]

"He's scared," Bert said bluntly, sitting back on his heels next to her. "Cut him some slack." They were all scared: scared, and tired, and grieving. He found it hard to fault Roland for being a little irrational in pushing for her to learn gunmanship; it was the best way he had to gain some illusion of control over the situation.

He didn't say any of that, though. He was never the most comfortable when it came to feelings, even other people's, and that was all he felt the need to tell her. Instead, he just leant forwards a little, frowning at the glowing crystal.

[apassingafternoon]

"I suppose I might if he would let me help him not be scared."

But it was the gunslinger's prerogative to adhere to over idealized masculinity, wasn't it? It was too much to expect any sort of clear honesty or emotion. She was beginning to get the hang of it but Kaine would fight with it tooth and nail, probably until she died once and for all, or until Bert got fed up and left her.

Either way, she tapped the glass experimentally one more time as she planted her butt to the ground. "It's not going to see many uses, but it'll do for the night." And for what she'd really need.

The glass remained pleasantly innocuous, though, as Kaine forced her brain to obey, to focus on a single image. The tip of the glass pyramid glowed, faint and uneven before it grew a wispy rectangle. It shifted unevenly with the muddiness of her brain, and she finally closed her eyes to fully imagine the face she wanted to show her - well, her boyfriend.

The old woman in the glasses' window wasn't exactly frowning, rather she possessed the same resting bitch face that Kaine did. Or rather it was the other way around, since the woman was far too old to have been Kaine's mother, and the set of her jaw was a little different, her cheekbones weren't quite as high. Kaine herself was quite serious and by the looks of it, the source of it was now very obvious.

"That," She said, gently peeking her eyes open, satisfied to find that it had settled into something firm and easily observed. "Is my grandmother."

The image shifted every so often, changing to the sight of her grandmother completing various tasks or talking to her. The perspective was entirely through Kaine's eyes, so occasionally her own limbs would come into view.

[askthelookout]

Uncharacteristically silent, Bert only nodded, resting his chin as he squinted into the glass. There was a certain tension in his shoulderblades, and he gnawed at his lips as he watched. It was strange, seeing Kaine's family. And it was, he realised with a little pang, strange to see someone old, going about their life, being normal. The adults of Gilead, their parents and grandparents, had been gone a long time. Even with their time in that other, less war-torn world, it was a start to realise that he had come to think of anyone over thirty as unthinkably old.

He blinked away a frustrating hint of tears, and focused, trying to look past his own sentimentality to what she was showing him.

[apassingafternoon]

It wasn't as if her world was a bastion of total safety. People kept on because they trusted one another, and she knew well enough that in her grandmother's time no one made it beyond forty. But that woman, and Kaine's mother had been made of strong stock, they'd both been dragged down kicking and hollering. Unfortunately she can't help thinking about what ultimately killed her grandmother and so that peaceful image jolts violently and shifts to the last image Kaine had: A stubborn, proud woman squashed like a bug underneath the disfigured palm of an incredibly huge Spectre.

"Sorry." Closing her eyes, she forced herself to think on something else. In the end she chose Bert himself, playing a loop of little moments that always brought her comfort. And while there was nothing physically different about that image the way she saw Cuthbert made him look brighter, almost, far more confident than he might have actually been in any of those moments.

"It'll attach to littler things when it's broken like this, and I'm not too good at focusing on it anyway."

[askthelookout]

Bert's face, which had tightened at that last violent image, softened again when he saw himself in the glass. He looked sad, still, and rather confused; tilting his head, he raised one eyebrow.

What he wanted to say, really wanted to say, was choked up in his throat, the way genuine emotion tended to with him. If he'd managed to find the words, they might have been something like Is that who you think I am? After everything, is it still? Bright, and sharp, and fun. All the things he drew over him like a cloak, things that never really felt that way from inside.

"Is that what my hair looks like from the back?" he said at last, lightly, resorting to levity as usual. "Gods, no wonder my mother was always telling me to brush it."

[apassingafternoon]

"Smartass."

But she really hadn't meant to show him that, so now is hardly the time to have a deep conversation about his confidence issues and the differences between how one sees themselves and how someone else views them. "It's just how I see you, don't think about it too much." It's all she can really think to say as the glass chatters at its base and the image it projects faded briefly as a result.

Kaine faced the little triangle again to focus, but she couldn't help mentioning, "I wanted to show Roland himself from her eyes."

That was all she'd wanted for as many reasons as there were stars in the sky, but the thing was likely to break all over again soon and she still had a task, so she tried to center herself on that.

[askthelookout]

"He wouldn't see it," Bert told her with a shrug, and settled back on his haunches again. He was serious, there. Roland might look, might even think he was seeing it, but you didn't need the Touch to know that Roland could be incredibly obtuse when it suited. As good at looking without seeing as he was at seeing without looking.

(The hypocrisy of this assessment, mind you, totally escaped Bert)

Pursing his lips, he worried at a hangnail and watched the glass.

[apassingafternoon]

"Like I said, the both of you are far too alike."

But the image she needed came into focus, so they could both afford to let that go as a whole. The image was of not just Nariko but Christian as well. They stood in front of the guard towers of Kyrat and what Kaine watched more than anything was the hand motions, when she tried to repeat the image flickered but she kept at it, squinting and repeating.

"It would just be too easy to have a boring old password, wouldn't it." She mostly grumbled at the universe, rather than Bert.

[askthelookout]

Bert, for his part, watched the image in staid silence, a shallow crease appearing between his brows as he squinted at the detail. He had been trained to remember movements and images, to be able to recall and report them days or weeks after the fact. He didn't say anything, but by the time she'd repeated it a couple of times, he was pretty sure he had the motions properly seared into his memory. Only then did he look away from the glass, back at her.

"Passwords are easier to cheat," he pointed out mildly. "The ones that're easy to remember, anyroad."

[apassingafternoon]

"I guess that's true, even when you're with a Guardian you have to be able to repeat the prayer, and it's a lot harder to learn than 'Indigo' or something." Harder for Kaine, who hadn't been trained to do much of anything but survive and that didn't generally include extensive gestures to get past guards. Whether she realized that Bert had paid enough attention or not was up in the air, but Kaine shut the thing down by covering its point with her hand. It glowed almost angrily before the light in it died out, and a deep crack formed on one side, threatening to split it back into multiple pieces.

"That was all I needed." She picked it up carefully and held it out to Bert. "It's probably safest with you, all things considered."

Bert wouldn't be as easily tempted as Roland, or feel any desire to keep it close as Kaine did.

[askthelookout]

Bert looked at it askance, screwing up his nose, but he put out his hand and took it anyway. "Fragile, magical, and potentially dangerous. Just what I always wanted," he commented sarcastically, tucking it into the pocket of his vest. "Next time, why don't you give me a live grenade?" At least I have the training to deal with one of those.

But it was only a token protest, really. He buttoned up the pocket, patted it into place, and got to his feet, proffering his hand. After a moment's thought, he said quietly, "You might show Roland what she thinks of him on the way there, if it works out. When we've got less immediate worries."

The end-ish?

[apassingafternoon]

She took his hand but let go of it just as quickly, sighing with her eyes skyward. It was token for him but to never be entirely trusted, to consistently remain on the outside was too much. But she knew better to get into that, and at least Bert wasn't being entirely unreasonable. Kaine remained silent for a little while longer, and then added, "We have a while before then."

All they seemed to have was worry and pain and exhaustion, and she didn't know how to sooth any of that, how to mend let alone heal. It fucking sucked.

"But it might be easier with the first day behind us." She took his hand again, and found a genuine smile to give him.