0015: LIGHT
"Wish I had a light now," Satero grumbled. He'd fished out a damp cigarette, and was giving it a critical look.
"It'd go out," Corosa said, without thinking. He was too busy cursing the weather. Though they'd chosen a tree with heavy foliage, they were still getting wet.
Then it dawned on him that while Satero seemed to have a never-ending supply of cigarettes, he had never lit any of them up.
"You don't smoke," Corosa said sharply.
"Eh?" Satero was rubbing water from his eyes, and didn't seem to be listening. "What?"
"You said you wanted a light, but you don't smoke." That was enough to strike anyone as odd.
"I did?" Satero frowned. "When?"
Corosa turned. "Just a few moments ago," he said, slowly, wondering whether Satero was mocking him by acting stupid.
But Satero only looked perplexed. "You ain't sick, are ya?"
They engaged in a long stare, each wary of the other. If Satero had been mocking him, he wouldn't draw it out like this. At least, Corosa didn't think he would. It did not seem like him.
Satero reached out and put a hand against Corosa's forehead. He left it there for a moment, then placed the same hand against his own forehead, trying to get a comparison.
"I'm not sick," Corosa said.
"Well, 's either you or me. You sure you heard me say that?" Satero asked, as if hoping Corosa was pulling his leg. But if there was one difference between them, it was that Satero's sense of humor was far greater than Corosa's.
"Alright. Maybe I did say that." Satero did not look convinced, though. "I dunno. This weather's doin' strange things to me. Don't remember who I am, half the time."
Corosa was silent, still musing on what had just happened.
"I don't like sittin' still," Satero said, suddenly, pulling Corosa out of his thoughts. "These past few days, we haven't been able to move 'cause ya shot me--"
"--We're back to that again, are we," Corosa murmured. It was the subject of most of their Corosa-versus-drunk-Satero arguments.
Satero punched his shoulder.
"No, just sayin'. Can't move because of it. An' I don't like it, 's makin' me weird-like." Satero covered a yawn with his hand, and then stuck the cigarette between his teeth. Corosa watched it like it was going to bite.
"Weird," Satero repeated, darkly. "Like...I don't get drunk. Usually. Not like this, anyway. I mean...sometimes, yeah, when I'm feelin' good. Or stupid. Usually stupid. But not when I'm frustrated. Drinking when I'm frustrated, it just makes me angry, and – I already apologized to ya about that. But that's what happens. So I don't do it. But like this, when I got nothin' else to do..."
"You drink because you're bored?" Corosa asked, raising an eyebrow. Then again, Satero never had struck him as the drink-to-drown-your-sorrows type.
"Hah. Sounds stupid. But that's sorta...yeah. That's it. For these days, anyway," Satero said.
Corosa shrugged. Each to their own. When Satero got drunk, he tended to get angry, and when he got angry he tended to argue with Corosa. If that was what he wanted to do in order to alleviate boredom, Corosa saw no need for him to get drunk first. Maybe things would lead to less hitting, that way.
Satero mumbled something into his hand. Somewhere along the way, his cigarette had disappeared.
"Hm?" Corosa asked, glancing at him.
"'And I'm getting worriedI said." For once, Satero was not looking at Corosa; now it was the other way around.
"About wha -- oh." Corosa interrupted his own question, realizing how stupid it was. There was only one thing for Satero to be worried about.
Or was there? He, in fact, did not know much about Satero's past. He knew about the man's family, but nothing about what he had done before they met; where he'd lived, where he usually worked, why he was in the desert in the first place. It occurred to him that Satero had to have had a life that didn't involve Corosa, at some point. I ain't the one who's been runnin' around for the past two years. He had just said that a few days before, and it was damn well true. Corosa was the one who only had one thing to worry about -- himself. Satero was different.
"...About your leg?" Corosa asked, warily.
"Yeah," Satero said. If he did have friends and family and lovers back wherever he'd come from, he wasn't thinking about them now. "Ya think I'm gonna have to limp for the rest of my life?"
If he did, Corosa thought inanely, he'd have a hard time getting back to his home.
That was not what Corosa said. Instead he admitted, "I don't know."
"Well aren't you helpful," said Satero, twisting his mouth into a frown that was becoming more and more common. Corosa didn't much like the change, and hoped things would be different once they managed to get moving again.
"Ya realize I won't be nearly as much use to ya with a limp."
"You probably won't be nearly as much use to me without a weapon, either," Corosa said. He closed his eyes. Use? He did not think of Satero in terms of use, and never had.
"Shit!" Satero clapped a hand to his mouth. His words came out muffled. "Forgot I lost my axe. Fuck, that was your fault, too."
"Quite a lot is my fault." Corosa wondered if Satero would some day manage to pin his amputated arm as 'your fault', too.
Satero punched him again. "Don't guilt-trip me. Not everything's your fault. ...Alright. Maybe a little bit. Some things. ...Oh, hell. Damn you, you're right, a lot is your fault."
Corosa opened his eyes. "You do wonders for a man's self-esteem."
"Hah. Whaddaya need self-esteem for? Ya got me. I've got enough self-esteem to make up for you." Satero's grin was back. Corosa liked it there; it was familiar, and told him that something had to be going right.
Corosa raised his head, suddenly all too aware of something that had just gone hollow within himself.
His consciousness of the fact that Satero had led another life, the fact that they would be on the move soon, Satero considering himself in terms of how useful he was, Satero's own words – ya got me, don't ya? -- all of it was coming together, and it all came down to one question:
How long?
"You'll have to go back, eventually," Corosa said, voice low. "To wherever you came from."
"What for?" Satero was nonplussed, and showed it.
"You have a life."
"Yeah, right now I'm plannin' on spendin' it to follow you, And make sure ya don't lose your other arm, too." Satero was starting to comprehend what Corosa was getting at, now. He looked none too pleased about it.
Corosa covered his face with his hand, feeling a headache coming on. "Don't you have...anyone? Friends?"
"...Sort of."
Corosa took that as a yes, despite the pause beforehand. "What about them?"
Satero whistled a few short bars of some unfamiliar tune. "...They can go to hell?"
"I believe that counts as a wrong answer." Corosa was amused, despite himself. It felt like he was questioning a child. And no doubt Satero was going to come to the wrong conclusion, despite how many hints Corosa dropped.
The amusement went away. He cut to the point. "You can't just abandon everyone. And everything you had before."
Mastersmith. Corosa had not met many mastersmiths in his lifetime. Anyone whose skills developed to that level had to have had something successful going for them. In any case, trailing after a crippled gunslinger was hardly the sort of job for a mastersmith.
"Hell, for all you know, maybe I didn't have anythin' before. And my friends can live just fine without me." Satero's voice was not yet angry, but it seemed to be getting there.
Corosa said nothing, wondering if he should let the conversation come to a halt before they ended up fighting again.
Satero ended it for them. "Listen, we can talk about this some other time. I'm going to sleep."
There was a short and clipped quality to Satero's words, not a tone Corosa had heard before. Perhaps Satero was already angry, then.
But later, when night had fallen and the rain had stopped, Corosa heard Satero shifting his weight. And then the mastersmith slung his arm around Corosa's neck and proceeded to fall asleep on his shoulder, without saying a word.
He could not have been all that angry.
AN: ...And one of these days, these two will stop sitting around and talking and actually do stuff. 'S hard to imagine, I know, but it will happen.
(a-a-a-and shush apparently it's the rainy season in Rune-Midgard okay.
I AM GUILTY. SO, SO GUILTY.)