Chapter VIII - Your Song

"... I gotta say that's probably only the sixth most authentic backstory I've heard coming out of a mundy's mouth, and that's not including Gorou." the Tramp gave her a mildly hurtful look.

"And it took you this long to realize that I am one? What kind of people have you been working in that organization of yours?"

"What kind of people have I not been wasting within this evolutionary throwback of a settlement is what you should ask… oh damn." Zora muttered as she shut her eyes, not wanting to face the rising grin on the bandit's lips.

"I see that my immaculate speech pattern has finally started to rub onto you and more. Impressive." he chuckled, gaining a challenged brow and smirk from the woman as she playfully jabbed his shoulder.

"Laugh it up Rain-Top. It's not like I'm lookin' to be your ideal picture of a hardworking housewife or anything." a short relay on that sentence and the bounty hunter's eyes were quick to be pie plates, the bandit's reddened stare matching her own.

"E-excuse me?"

"Do yourself a favor and forget everything I said from this moment onward and I'll do the same." the bounty hunter suggested quickly.

"Done." the two turned away from each other for a short moment, allowing time for the uncomfortable air to flush out of the space between them, but rebounds tend to return as soon as the memories.

"So… I reckon he didn't leave all too clean?" Zora asked hesitantly to which the bandit replied with a pained shake of his head.

"Not even an ear-splitting song to the other side of the moon was enough to stop the speed of a bullet."

"Was there anyone around?"

"Word of the incident got out to Baba O'Riley soon enough. Some of them offered to stay with me through the ordeal. The local doctor gave us a few days." the man explained.

"I see… and what about the dog?"

"Oh, Cujo…" his tone fell at the long dead name. "He was so young when it happened. I stayed in town with him and tried to help him through the years, as hard as they were. And then… his years came knocking too." there was a mild break to his breath as his hands hung limp on his knees, but a light tap to his foot quickly brought his sullen eyes back to the bounty hunter.

"So now you're looking to get back at em'?" Zora concluded.

"Well, not in the sense that you think most vengeful bandits would."

"Whattaya mean?" there was a twitch in the Tramp as he fiddled with his hat for a while, a steady heat rising in his cheeks that he tried to suppress with little avail.

"Remember that billstack I gave to Howdy when I first came here?"

"Yeah, so?"

"I earned it." the woman raised a curious brow.

"You have a job?"

"Well, when you spend half of your ruined childhood lying about your age to work odd jobs on and off of towns that you barely recognize, even you could fork up enough money to afford a second guitar." the bandit mused.

"So you're a busker, huh? Not the least dignified job a bandit could work at." the bandit gave a light shrug.

"So long as it puts food on the table, I am good for it."

"Still doesn't explain how you live on the lam, though." the red in his cheeks burned again.

"Well… you do not see a lot of thieves paying for anything that they want, do you?"

"Can't say that I have."

"So where do you think all of that money went?" for a moment the bounty hunter pondered, lifting her chin up her fingers. Why would a thief amass a large amount of stolen items if he was not going to make use of it in the first place? To destroy it entirely would have marked the epitome of criminal stupidity, something she believed that he was not, and judging from his loner approach to thievery, it was highly unlikely that he would have allowed himself to be pulled from under the rug by anyone else.

And then it hit her.

"Oh hell no… no, no way. I was only mildly amused when you read me that bedtime story when I was out cold… but this…" she almost did not want to believe in it, but the pieces felt so easy to fit together just by looking at him that when she tried to cover her hiccuping laughter, it felt even more ridiculous for her to just let it all out, especially when she met his embarrassed gaze.

"C-Come on, give a man credit where it is due! It took me the entire entire night to sneak that money to the nearest town before sunrise without anybody noticing, and half of that time was spent on finding a wagon and a horse should my luck feel testy! Not to mention how even paper stacks can break your back just as well, if not harder than gold!"

And that was all it took. The loudest and most boisterous laugh the bounty hunter could ever muster echoed throughout the entire town and forest beyond with such vibrancy that one might even claim to feel the trees shaking in their roots while the clouds fell from the sky.

The entire community turned to the hysterical bounty hunter in varying degrees of confusion and awkwardness, as if the man had only gone and finally broken her.

"That!" Zora hiccuped in between giggles. "Has got to be!" a tear of laughter escaped her eye. "The most boy scout thing I've ever heard coming out of a thief!" the woman let out a small wheeze as she caught her breath, still chuckling as she did so. "You think you can twist your vengeance around so you can turn into a nameless champion of the people or-!" the bounty hunter stopped when caught the man's form.

His hair was down, shielding the eyes staring blankly at his laced fingers as they hung limp upon stilted knees. His hat sat quietly by his side as did his guitar as a sad sigh escaped his lips, the weight of reality coming hard and fast to Zora as she soon adopted a regretful frown in place of her simper.

"Hey… I-I didn't mean anything by it. I was just… I'm sorry." when the bandit refused to turn his head to face her, the woman looked away in shame as the pained silence began to settle in.

… … …

"Do you think that I made a mistake?" the bounty hunter perked at the sound of his voice.

"What?"

"Do you think that I made a mistake?" the bandit replied, turning to Zora with torn eyes. The bounty hunter, as snarky as her tongue would get, could not bear to see him so broken, despite knowing she was not the best at dealing with this sort of scenario.

"W-Why the hell are you asking me this? I ain't no PHD therapist." the Tramp turned away with a sigh.

"I know. But… well..." the man looked at his guitar. There were times that it hurt for him to merely chance a look at it, knowing what it had now entailed. Nevertheless, he grabbed the neck of the instrument and placed it flat on his lap.

"My dad trusted me with this before he died." he ran his hand through the shining silver as he felt the trickles of the well-worn metal against his fingers. He plucked a string, acknowledging the simplicity of the note as the hum of the string slowly faded away.

"I promised him that I would make good with it. To be good and to do good things with it." the Tramp looked to the sky, noticing that the sun had shifted a bit from the center as it inched ever nearer to the end of its journey for the day.

"Can not say what came after reflects that promise all too well, does it?" the Tramp continued to pluck away at the strings, indifferent as to which note he played or what order he played them in as he gazed aimlessly into the afternoon sky.

But then he heard a note that he knew he could not have played.

Then another.

And another.

Soon, the man found himself playing an entirely different cord. Staring down the neck of the guitar, he noticed an orange gloved hand pressing down on some of the frets. Surprised, he looked up to see the bounty hunter staring at him, a genuine smile on her lips.

"I may not be the best when it comes to words and such." Zora admitted with a light chuckle. "And chances are you might take this the wrong way a lot more than I could." she took the leather strap of the instrument and wrapped it, as well as her own hands, around his shoulders.

"But you only did what you thought would make your family proud of you." she told him. "I know, I wanted to make my ma proud of me, too."

"But… what if they are not proud… what if…?" his voice sounded as if it was on the verge of breaking, but Zora was having none of it as she forced the bandit to face her again.

"Well, that's what I told you. You might take this the wrong way a lot more than I could…" she paused. "So let me ask you this. Did you ever want to kill someone?"

"What!? No! Never… I could never do it. I would never forgive myself if I did." the bounty hunter seemed satisfied with his answer.

"Then you're already better than I could ever be." she assured him. "I've killed to the point that I lost count. Men, women, old or young. I nearly killed you on more than one occasion. Hell, I even came close to killing a child once." Zora placed a finger to the man's lip, silencing whatever horrified thoughts he could have wanted to project.

"I never said I did kill a child… but knowing that I came that far, I'm on what my life has to offer." she admitted quietly before averting her gaze downwards, causing worry to rise in the man.

"Zora?" the bounty hunter slowly turned to meet his eyes again.

"I've let my actions turn me into a monster long before you chose to become a bandit, and now that I've thrown myself with even bigger monsters that I don't even fully trust, I plan to keep it between me and them. No one else would get involved. Not Howdy, not Gorou…" the woman looked up to the bandit with a saddened frown before reaching out a hand to gently caress his cheek, the sudden touch sending shocks to his spine.

"Not even you."

There was a lack of words from the man as Zora slowly retreated her hand from him. All this time, he only thought that he had merely made a handful of wrong turns in his life that he could come around should he choose to. And yet this woman, this wonderful lady in front of him that he had grown so fond of in only less than a week considered herself as a monster because of them.

He knew that there were things in life that he could be rather slow to realize at first glance. But failing to realize how she viewed herself sooner? It was never her wish to come this far. Now she wanted to keep people like Howdy and Gorou away from her just because of what she saw in herself.

Of what feared in herself.

The man turned back to her, noting the sorrowful glint in her eyes, and held onto the hand that caressed him moments before, bringing her attention back to him.

"I do not think you are a monster." Zora merely smirked a sad harrumph to his claim.

"Next thing I know, you'll tell me that you think I'm pretty or something."

"And you are." the bounty hunter shook her head with a light chuckle, only to look at the bandit and notice his smile, genuine and unwavering accompanied by a pair of calmed and longing eyes. It was not long before a shock began to kick in.

"You… you actually..." the man placed a hand on her shoulder.

"From the moment I first met you in this tavern until now…" he began. "You were always the same deadly but pretty Zora Salazar that I have come to know you as." the woman was silent, so he continued.

"You may not believe in it, but deep down, you know that you care about people like Howdy and Gorou, who in turn care for you all the same." he released his hand from her shoulder and motioned to a loosely buried seed from within the sand. He plucked it up from the ground and showed it to her.

"And even if you think that your powers can only do away with destruction, it is just like you said. 'It could be used for reasons other than death'."

The bandit gently placed the seed into Zora's palm. The woman balanced the strange gift in her hand before turning the man that handed it to her with a raised brow. It did not take a half-wit to know what he wanted her to do and when all the bandit gave her a simple nod in approval, she returned her focus to the seed as her palm began to glow a radiant orange light.

Soon, the seed began to wiggle and wobble. At the center of its shell, a small green bud poked out of the seed like a sparrow chick greeting the world for the first time. From the bud, a tall healthy green stalk complete with a set of spade leaves quickly rose from the bud until it ended with a round patch of pitch black seeds wrapped around in a fluttering loop of sun golden pedals.

The bounty hunter gazed at the newly birthed flower in childlike wonderment. It seemed so long ago that she had almost forgotten how blissful and fragrant it was to simply play around with her epithet with the innocent curiosity like a little girl.

A small grin rested on Zora's lips as she brought the flower to her nose and took in a scent. Sweet was the smell of the seedy patch as a soft sigh of content escaped her lips, relishing in its aroma.

"See? You can do it." the bounty hunter hummed in agreement. The man then cupped his hands around the flower with her.

"It is only fitting if it stayed with you for the rest of your life. A reminder of sorts." he gently took the flower from her and gestured to her hair. "If I may…?"

The woman felt a light rush of heat from her cheeks as she ran a few fingers across the strands above her forehead. She had never let anyone be so forward with her before, Howdy being the first obvious precaution.

But then she saw the welcoming glance on the bandit as he made his request, and even if she might question the realities of his intentions later one, a smile was all that was needed to make her reply to him and the man eagerly went to work.

The stalk slid smoothly in between the strands. A loop wrapped around the other with no need to rush or hurry. One at a time and meticulously so.

Before long, a brown braid adorned with a golden sunflower flowed gently from Zora's hair like a series of lingering vines. By God, if his life had not been so reliant on borrowed time, he would have gazed at her magnificent until the sun itself had run its billion-year long course.

"What do you think?"

"… it's beautiful." the woman held up the new coiffure by her fingers, trailing it gently with great intrigue.

"And beauty such as this needs to be well protected, do you not think so?"

"Huh?" her query was cut short when she noticed that her other hand felt strangely heavier than usual. Her fingers clasped and she realized she was gripping something. It could not have been another seed, it was far too big. But it could not have been something like a rock either, it felt too comfortable in her palm. She looked down at her hand.

And gasped.

It was somewhat lighter than the one she had previously owned. The revolving chamber had been completely removed, replaced with a much more basic break action chamber. There was also a second barrel that sat right below the other, both of which were painted with light golden crowns at the muzzle. The grip felt smoother, too, no doubt an attribute of its metallic-plastic build compared to her original wood-grain design.

But all in all, it truly did not matter all that much. She was holding onto the remnants of the old revolver she thought had been destroyed forever, now rebuilt into a lengthened derringer painted in all of its original colors of gold, silver and brown.

"W-where did you get this?" Zora asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Howdy and Gorou pitched in when I asked them. They were of great help."

"You… made this… for me?" she looked at her new weapon, inspecting every inch and aspect of it, old and new, with eyes wide.

"I know it is not entirely like the one you had before, but I could not live with the fact that I did not try to make up for what I did to you that night." the man paused, unsure how to meet her possible reaction.

"I hope you-!"

BANG!

A shot burst through the air, hitting an old bottle of heavily aged beer and knocking into the depths of the town's old abandoned watering well with a resounding splat from the mud below.

"Oh! Free beer!" a voice called from under the well, the Tramp and Zora only looking in stunned silence at their seat of the stoop.

"W-well, I guess it shows that it w-!" a pair of arms suddenly wrapped around his neck and nearly tackled him onto the ground. The bandit barely mustered enough strength after a brief interlude of shock to prevent himself from falling over as he looked to the woman who suddenly hugged him.

"Z-Zora!? What are you…?" he stopped when his ears picked up the sounds of light hiccups as well as very faint sniffles.

And the two words he never thought he would ever hear coming from her.

"Thank you…" she cooed, nuzzling up to him as she allowed herself to softly cry on his shoulder. The man turned to her, absorbing the scene playing with him for a short moment, before smiling in content as he wrapped his own hands around her waist and holding her close, gently stroking her hair as he had done for her the night before.

For a moment, it seemed as if there was nothing between them. No barrier of spite or fear of the other or any other force to separate them apart. Everything and everyone around them had only gone and faded away. They were the only people left on the planet and all they had were each other.

For a moment, all they needed were each other.

For a moment, everything felt perfect.

SNIFF! SNIFF!

Broken out of their trance by the sudden noise, the two quickly pulled apart to see Howdy leaning by the doorway, grinning from ear to ear as he held onto a handkerchief to wipe his tears.

"I know I'm blind and all that… but damn it, that was just…!" the old hillbilly blew his nose. "Ya done good… both of ya."

Now that she was armed with a weapon, Zora would probably have taken this as the perfect opportunity to threaten Howdy back into the saloon out of pride. But knowing the things he and Gorou had already done for her in only more than a week, she merely shook her head with a chuckle at the old man before turning back to the bandit.

"So…" the man started.

"So…?" Zora repeated, equally curious.

"What do you want to do now?"

"… I don't know." she answered truthfully. "You?"

"I mean… you could go back to taking me in, now that you have a gun." the woman pondered for a minute. It was true, she could simply carry on with what she had originally set out to do with him. She would not have to speak a word of this to her superiors and would still be able to keep her job regardless of the things they may inquire about.

So she looked back at the man, and smiled.

"Sure, I'll take you in… to Howdy's, on me." the Tramp stared at her in light surprise.

"It's already late either way and I don't wanna hand over my prize just yet." she cupped his cheek, soothing it by the rub of her thumb. "Especially when said prize has yet to tell me his name."

The man felt a warmth stronger than he had ever known before. It was almost terrifying how amazing it felt, that when he clasped his fingers over hers, he feared that his skin might burn off from the extra heat. But the journey to find happiness was, more often than not, a risky endeavor, and the ones who could see it to the end would bear the greatest of the fruit.

And so the Tramp grinned as he stared back at the bounty hunter he had chosen to be his with joy.

"Nada. Nada Roudha."