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“What's this for?” Roberto grunted as Vash sat a glass of whisky down next to him on the bar counter. It was late, almost all of the patrons completely gone and tucked away into their hovels for the rest of the night. Roberto had a collection of cigarette butts in an ashtray, another tucked between his fingers.
“I owed you a drink,” the Humanoid Typhoon answered with a smile that was far too familiar and warm for a stranger, a dimple in his left cheek. The lights that hummed from their hanging place along the back shelf of the bar caught the curve of Vash's nose, the rim of his glasses.
Roberto grunted, but took the drink. He stared into the liquid amber, the smell promising to burn. He sipped slowly, it going down smooth. It was top shelf stuff.
Vash's right leg swung idly, the bottom of his boot catching the rung of the barstool. His fingers clicked along the side of the glass before he sipped his own drink.
“I remember you…” Roberto mumbled into the glass, his voice echoing softly. “At first I thought it was a trick. Or that you were a startlingly good look-alike. Or, hell , even his damn son…” He set the glass down, Vash's eyes going wide for just long enough to make it appear to be the trick of the light as he turned away to sip his own drink.
“I'm sorry,” he apologized.
“For what?” Roberto grunted. “If it weren't for you…” he trailed off, setting the cigarette between his teeth. It was more comfortable to let his spine curl over the bar counter than to sit upright now, age claiming his posture and becoming more intimate with his body in the late hour. Yet Vash remained upright. His skin didn't have a single wrinkle. He was a cruel mirage.
“I took a long time to get you that drink. I'm sorry…” He looked down into his own glass, shoulders coming up to his ears.
“But you got me it, didn't you?” Roberto groused around the cigarette between his teeth. He stared at Vash, brows drawn together, as if the ghost before him would vanish again. Vash gave him another smile, shoulders relaxing. A smile Roberto recognized was intended for his friends.
Roberto had never been a particularly good shot. But he was worse with his vision hazed over and too much of his blood clinging to his pant leg. Worse when it was his last bullet. Worse when he wanted to give up and let death come for him.
“I don't have anything left you fucking jackals!” he spit, voice nasal from his broken nose.
But the man knelt in front of him, the sun no longer shadowing his back and hiding his face. He was blond, a slightly upturned little nose and a look of worry in his eyes. He was less of a man and more around Roberto’s age. Young. Spry. But well-fed and his clothes were more maintained than his own.
“Are you okay?” he asked, head tipping slightly to the side.
“Fuck you,” Roberto grunted, the world swimming. “Just let me die already…”
“I'm sorry, but I can't do that… Here, use me however you need to as a crutch. Let's get you out of the sun and patched up,” the young man insisted, bending down to loop Roberto's arm around his shoulders. He hissed, teeth clenched and leg feeling like someone had lit a bonfire along his skin.
“Okay—okay… nice and easy. Let's just get you up.”
Roberto was so out of it that he felt like he had just been picked up like a child, like he weighed nothing. The young man helped drag him who knows where, Roberto's head dropping as he assumed he'd be sold for parts under the guise of help.
But sand turned into shade, which turned into a bed, which turned into the man apologizing with a needle and alcohol in his hand, which turned into still blackness, which turned into the sound of clicking and tinkering. The darkness of sleep was intermittently interrupted by water and soft food.
Roberto grunted, sitting up to look at the small room that could barely manage a bed, a desk, and a chair.
“Oh, you're up! Good morning!” he greeted, Roberto's bleary eyes missing what he had been working on as he dropped his coat over it. “How do you feel?”
He frowned severely at the stranger. “How much?”
“Huh?”
“You didn't cut me for parts. So how much for saving my life? For eating your food and water?” Were his eyes swollen shut? He felt under them, puffy and raw skin, his nose in agony, but no longer twisted.
“Mmm…” He cocked his head to the side, arms crossed as he thought about it. “For the cost of my medical supplies, food, my bed, the painkillers, washing and fixing your clothes—oh, and the time it took to drag you here—” Michael above, he was really tallying every little thing on his fingers, wasn't he? A vulture, just like the rest. “—live.” He decided, fingers dropping into his lap. “Even if it's badly. Please just live. You shouldn't go around asking other people to let you die.”
“I—what?”
The young man smiled at him. “My payment for everything I did for you. That's all I want, okay? I couldn't just leave someone with his whole life ahead of him to die like that.” He turned back to his desk, his right leg swinging idly, the bottom of his boot catching the rung of his chair.
“Are you nuts? You don't even know why I was left out there, bleeding and alone! I could be some psycho mass murderer for all you know, you dipshit!” Roberto scoffed.
“I mean… you could, yeah. Then I'd probably have to turn you over to some kind of authority. Buuut I'd still want you to live and apologize to those you've hurt. So,” he twirled a gun out from under his coat and aimed it at Roberto. “Are you?” he asked with a smile, a dimple in his left cheek.
“No—no, it was an example!” Roberto insisted, hands up. The stranger chuckled, twirling the gun around his index finger and putting it in his holster.
“I thought so. Anyway, how are you feeling?”
“Like I got beat up and robbed,” he grumbled.
“I guess you'll need a place to stay then… You can rest here, I guess,” he decided, looking out the small glass window. “I can always find some excuse to stay until you're better, then continue out.”
“This isn't your place?” Roberto asked, confused.
“No,” he chuckled with a shake of his head. “I'm just allowed to borrow it sometimes as a favor. Are you hungry? Oh, I should see how your wounds are doing first.”
It took Roberto a moment between the dim lighting, the disorienting pain, and his half-swollen shut eyes to realize the young man wasn't wearing an unusual glove, but missing his arm. It clicked silently as he checked his wounds, confusing Roberto.
What kind of person, in a world where it was eat or starve, gave so much for a stranger? He was an odd one.
And the longer he stayed near him while he healed, the more he realized how right he was to think that. The young man made a buffoon out of himself, always laughing even if he should have cried. It was amazing he was still alive with how little he seemed to eat, with how often he got shot at, with how frequently he always seemed to be in the center of a confrontation. He couldn't keep his pointy nose to himself.
“You know,” Roberto started, the chatter of the crowd in the bar almost drowning out his voice. The stranger hummed, leaning closer to hear him and swallowing cheekfuls of cheap whisky. “I think you're the dumbest person I've ever met.”
“Yeah? You think so?” he asked, flattered, with his eyes sparkling as the overhead lights of the bar caught the curve of his nose, the rim of his glasses. There was no way he was already that drunk.
He sighed. “Yeah. Dumber than a sack of bricks—but I like you,” he decided, getting a mouthful of beer foam in his thin mustache. “Or rather, I guess how I like that even though you're always getting into shit, it doesn't ever seem to get you down. It's painful to watch, but inspiring when you always come out of it okay.”
“You came out of it okay too, you know,” he reminded, a coy smile.
“Only because of some nosy stranger. I'm always…” He sighed. “I'm always in the shit end of something. It's kind of impossible to have a quiet life in a world like this one. Makes it feel like nothing matters, even with hopeful idiots like you nearby to inspire.”
“Then why not be louder? Drown it all out, go a little deaf?” he offered, adjusting his chair to face Roberto better.
“Oh, so now you're stupid-stupid,” Roberto chuckled.
“I'm serious! If nothing matters, isn't that wonderful?! It means you can do whatever you want!” he insisted, tugging Roberto's chair so he was facing him. “You can be anything or nothing at all and I think that's amazing!”
“Ohh, you're piss drunk, ain't'cha?” Roberto chuckled. “Anything? Like what, a massive, loud as hell worm? Gobble everyone up?”
“Yes!” he insisted, pointing an excited finger at him. “Who's gonna stop you?”
“Just fucking—” Roberto held his arms up, laughing and ferocious as their alcohol sloshed in their cups. “Gobble up every goddamn jackal that's ever taken a bite out of me—like they're nothing!”
“Exactly! Dream unreasonable and big! Make your reality whatever you want! Please, live—even if it's for the unobtainable!”
Live. His only payment. His only consistent request.
“Bartender, I don't think my friend is drunk enough. Get him another drink on me, will you?” Roberto chuckled.
“Will you tell me something?” he requested, so close their knees touched. “In what's obtainable, out of all of the dreams you could ever have and places you could ever go, what do you want?”
Those dreams in that moment were lost to time, nostalgia, and alcohol. Tenderly taken like delicate morsels as glass after glass was emptied, as patrons filtered out of the bar to tuck away into their hovels for the rest of the night. Hope was a virus, infecting a young man with no prospects and no real desires. But he had entertained the stranger's question. He made up stories and told the truth about what he expected and what he wanted out of life.
The only thing Roberto remembered clearly was being told he was a good storyteller—once he told the truth. And the truth was that he was scared. In his twenties, alone, sure he was better off dead. But Roberto had such an earnestness to him that it was sure to move heartstrings.
His words mattered .
“What about you?” Roberto asked, words slurring. “What do you want to do?”
“I like to travel. I want to see and help as many people as I can. I also have a hard time sitting still,” he laughed.
“No Man's Land is pretty vast, wanderer. You think you'll even live that long? Between the desert and the robbers and your shit luck?” Roberto chuckled. He hadn't been this happy in a long, long time.
“Then let's make a deal,” he offered. “When we meet again, I'll buy you a drink next time!”
“Then I'll wait here for you—no matter what these goddamn jackals throw at me!”
“Cheers!”
Roberto realized he never got his name and it felt stupid to ask now. So, his pride made it so he never did.
“Oh, also!” Vash interrupted, the memories gone, a ripple in his short life stream compared to whatever Vash was, to however long he lived. “Congrats on your protégé! She's as spunky as you were!”
Roberto chuckled. “I think she's got a little more gusto, but don't tell her I think that.”
Vash shook his head. “No way—I remember what you were like.” He shouldn't, given how long ago and how short their time was together.
“No you dooon't,” Roberto grunted, sipping his drink.
“But I do! I remember exactly what you were like, Roberto,” Vash promised, leaning closer with that grin that never left and never changed. Eternal. So, maybe his friend from yesteryear was telling the truth and the clarity of the memories didn't change either… like he had just seen Roberto the other day in his mind. The whisky he had bought him was bitter with a sweet undertone.
