She stumbled into Angel Cave, leaving the tribal boy to catch up, and brushed aside the stern women that resided inside, who'd begun to badger her in a language she could hardly understand.
At the higher place of the cave, she raises her weathered pistol at the man in bandages, and it shakes violently in her hand. She doesn't even clutch the bullet wound on her side. Adrenaline from fear makes it numb the shock, and she lets it leak, staining her emerald pre-war dress. She just stands there, dress-matching eyes wide with disbelief, panting at the burning in her chest, while this man at his table inspects a mound of pistols. Under the Salt Lake City Police Department SWAT vest he was clad in, wrappings went on forever into his rolled up sleeves, stitched with decorative, yet simple tribal patterns. They only stop at his darkened fingertips, and of his face, only his eyes and inner eyebrows are able to be seen.
He repeats an action with each firearm, pulling the slide back and ejecting the clip, examining the extractor, flipping the gun to look down the rifled barrel, and shoving the clip back inside. He places them neatly on the other side of the table, and takes another. She can't even tell if he knew she was there, with his examining unceasing. Then there it is. The pause he takes, and the flick of his gaze over to her. Now she has his attention. But just as soon and it comes, it goes. His pale blue eyes return to the .45 in his hands, and he resumes by ejecting it's clip.
The ghost stories the courier's heard from Jed around the campfire that kept her up at night, in their physical form sits before her. The horrifying things he'd done manifests such a hate for the man several feet away from her, that her decision had already been made before her arrival.
From afar the click of her 5.56's hammer being cocked hits his ears, and he isn't in the least surprise to find it aiming right at him when he looks back at her. With an exhale, he places the Colt neatly on the table, and rises from the stacked cinderblocks he sat upon. He steps closer and closer to the courier, gradually closing the gap between them.
Her breath hitches at he subtle resistance of his bandaged forehead coming into contact with the end of her barrel, his intense stare unhindered, never blinking. Tension on the trigger grows as she squeezes harder in her grip. In her periphery, she can make out the man lifting his arms, slowly, and calmly, his charred, calloused fingers rest against the sides of her pistol's barrel. The trigger soon gives way, and the small click that it expels decieves the courier. Her pupils grow wide, seeing that the man in bandages had not blinked, had not flinched, had not reacted at all. His piercing glare just continues to chill her to the core.
"You're not the first to have tried." Is all he says, his voice grave, and dark.
That's when she stops breathing. She's visibly still, save for the trembling in her hand the heavy pistol had caused. By now she isn't even looking at him, but through him, passed him like the stare of death in a defeated foe. The unyielding tone of the Burned Man's dark, heavy words had knocked the breath right out of her lungs, an brought on an adrenaline in the courier she simply could not take, and her vision begins to blur, making the man in front of her a pale, fuzzy figure. The arm holding up her pistol is being weighed down by a growing weakness, and eventually, even her legs give way. There, she collapses onto the cavern floor of Angel Cave, with her vision fading to black. The padding sound of bare feet approaching soon follows, with the panicked voice of the young tribal man she'd met earlier, she struggles to hear. The flustered conversation between the two men above soon becomes distant echoes to the now half-conscious courier as her eyes slowly shut. Tense hands pulled her up, and that's all she can remember, before she falls limp into their arms.
She slumbers in peace now, in the lower part of Angel Cave, on a bed of Bighorner furs. She's wrapped in one of his long-sleeve button up shirts, and wears the short blue shorts she'd had on, over clean bandages wrapped around her abdomen and thigh. She sleeps without a sound, but the look of pain on her face lingers, her brows furrowed, her lips grimacing. Her short dark locks are soaked with with the sweat of the ordeal, and she lays there, curled from pain, in a ball. Joshua Graham sits on the floor of the cavern, against the cinder blocks by the fire, facing her, watching her sleep. Exhaustion relaxes his form, and he takes a deep sigh of relief watching the outline of her form ascend and descend, as her breathing had returned to normal. He's exhausted from fixing her up, from holding her down to keep her from thrashing around, failing to calm her cries of agonized pain as he dug the bullets and what shrapnal he could out of her wounds. It disturbed the spectating tribals. All the other New Canaanite ever taught him would've had to come into play to save her. She needed to help them, whether she wanted to accept it or not. He's just glad that it is over, and that she's fine. In his lap, beneath his bloody, bandaged hands, is the courier's blood soaked dress. He lifts the hardened cloth with his sticky fingertips, looking forward to seeing it being cleaned up, and the bullet holes being sewn, though he wonders if he's made the right choice.
