"You can't bring that in here-"
"The fuck I can't. Move."
The entire room had been buzzing with the low hum of music and conversations, short bursts of laughter and the clinking of glasses. Now it was dead silent aside from the music and all of the patrons were staring at the young woman who had barged in the front door of the tavern and had been immediately halted by the man behind the bar. She looked exhausted and frustrated, glaring at the bartender with hazel eyes as she struggled to shoulder and keep upright an unconscious man on her righthand side. The bartender had taken one look at him and paled, not because he was now dripping blood on the floorboards in steady globs, but because of who he was. It was clear that everyone in the room knew who he was by the stunned looks on their faces. He was clearly much taller than she was, draped over her right shoulder with a mess of spiked blonde hair atop his head and a long scarlet red coat that did little to hide the blood that was slowly staining it darker in spots. They all knew who he was from the faded flyer that was posted on the wall above the bar with large letters above his grinning face that spelled out WANTED. All she could do was sigh heavily, shaking her head slowly so that her short brunette bob swished slowly in anticipation of the argument to come.
"I said you can't bring-" the bartender continued, still blocking her path farther into the room. "- that in here! Leave!"
The initial irritation on the woman's face flared for a split second before it faltered, melting into a deadpan stare that visibly unnerved the bartender. Shifting the unconscious man's weight to better support him with only her right arm, she reached into her own tan coat with the left and drew a revolver with a quickness that made the bartender flinch back from her as she aimed at him. There really wasn't time for all this nonsense. For one he was still bleeding fairly heavily and she felt like she was going to drop him at any moment. No matter what it took, she was getting him to a damn room.
"I am police," she hissed through her teeth, dipping the gun down a touch to indicate herself. "Officer Haley, badge is on the belt if you'll take a second to look. If he bleeds to death here he can't be held accountable, right? So move your ass and get me a medic."
And that was all it took to make the bartender move out of her way. The room remained still and silent as she holstered her gun again and started hauling the unconscious man across it toward the hall where the rented rooms resided. Not a single person staring after her lifted a finger to help as she struggled along so that the anger kept boiling up to the point that by the time she reached the first door she kicked it in without a shred of hesitation. There was a short, mousey man standing clearly startled in the middle of the small room about to toss a large duffel bag onto the bed.
"Out," she barked and the man flinched at the sound but obeyed as she shoved passed him and unceremoniously dumped the unconscious man onto the bed as the last of her strength gave out on her.
For a moment she just stood there over the tattered mess of a man, panting ever so slightly from the effort it took to haul him there from her truck. Honestly just looking at him it would have been difficult to tell her was even alive, but thankfully she could see the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Weak, but alive. And she needed to keep him that way at all costs even though she knew that was going to be a constant struggle. Thankfully it was a fight she was ready and prepared for, so she set to work. Shrugging off her tan coat she dropped it on to the single chair that sat against the wall of the small shoe box room. It was the only furniture in the room aside from the small bed and a rickety looking night table. The plain white blouse she was wearing under her coat was smudged and smeared with blood, her khaki pants dirt stained and torn. If it weren't for the badge on her belt and the shoulder holster holding her revolver she probably would have looked like a derelict drifter. All she really wanted was to take a shower to wash off the blood and grime, but there was work to be done and she wasn't even sure if the bartender was going to acknowledge her demand for a medic. One way or another she was going to have to stop his bleeding if she was going to have a chance at keeping him alive.
It was easy at first to turn her wandering thoughts off as she fought to remove the staining red coat from the man on the bed. It probably wouldn't have been that hard of a task considering he was dead limp, but he had a metal prosthetic arm on the left side unlike anything she had ever seen that made taking the jacket off all the more troublesome. Once she'd managed to get that off of him with a huff she moved on to removing the black undershirt he was wearing to start assessing the damage. At first she was only puzzled by how his clothing could still be in tact if he was wounded that badly, but as she tugged at the black shirt she realized it was so much worse and her hands shuddered to a stop. The shirt was only hiked partway up his middle and already she could see the myriad of fresh cuts and lacerations littering his skin. That much she had anticipated. Not this.
Scattered among the fresh wounds were countless scars and bit of metal that had clearly been used to graft larger wounds closed. He had been in tatters long before she found him and she honestly didn't know how he wasn't literally falling apart. Something about the sight of him tugged at her heart, her eyes burning with the threat of tears. It was an odd sentiment for a wanted man, but the feeling was there all the same. The abuse he'd clearly been through was monstrous. Unthinkable. Wanted or not he was still a human being and this was beyond any kind of clear justice.
"You needed a medic, ma'am?"
If the soft female voice from the doorway hadn't pulled her attention away from the horrible sight in front of her she probably would have been too horrified to actually do anything to help him. For a moment she considered scolding the woman for calling her ma'am, but she bit her tongue and just gestured to the mess on the bed.
"I need him alive in order to take him in," she sighed, stepping back from the bed to give the woman room to work. "If he dies we'll both be in the shit, so work fast."
After the sixth bowl of bloody water and bandages she just stopped counting. From what she could gather from the medic and the nurse she'd called in for help, he was going to live. She had asked several times how long they thought it would be before he could travel but they couldn't give her a straight answer. By the time they were finished his torso was more than half covered in bandages and she was left sitting in the darkening room in silence, waiting. For what she really wasn't certain. Probably for the bartender to burst into the room and demand she leave again, but no one came. All through the night she sat in that lonely chair, revolver in hand, drifting in and out of consciousness. Every time she jolted awake she looked to the bed to make sure the mess of bandaged human was still laying there and then to the locked door. Once she was sure everything was as she left it she resumed her watch, drifting in and out of naps periodically.
There was no telling how many days went on like that. Small naps, allowing the nurses in to change bandages and every so often chasing the bartender off with threats of calling in more officers. It was going to keep him at bay for the time being, but eventually time was going to run out. Despite her better judgment she was starting the plan for leaving as soon as she could convince herself he wasn't going to immediately croak the moment she moved him. Just by looking at him that could have been any second, but she had to assume he was stronger than he looked or else he would have been dead already. After all of the wounds she'd seen them patch up it would have taken one hell of a constitution to survive this long.
"That's less blood than yesterday," she noted to the nurse as she finished the latest round of fresh bandages and started clearing away the bowl of pink water on the night table.
"Ma'am-"
"Haley. Officer Haley."
"Officer, I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't move him until we were absolutely sure he is well enough to handle it. His wounds could reopen."
"Blood loss isn't instant death. Will he survive it?"
The tight look on the nurses face told her what she needed to know. Yes he would survive it, but she didn't recommend it. It was going to have to be good enough because she couldn't stay in that tiny room any longer. That small space coupled with the glaring patrons and bartender were wearing on her nerves. If she had to deal with these people much longer she was going to smack someone upside the head. A small groan from the bed drew her attention along with the nurse, both of them instantly looking down at the blonde man to see if he was finally awake. Aside from the small noise and a slight shift of his head he was still out cold. She was about to move closer and jab at him to see if he was just faking his unconsciousness when a loud bang on the door nearly made her jump out of her skin. There wasn't much to deduce on who it could possibly be on the other side as she rolled her eyes and turned to pull it open, meeting the angry bartender and now several of his equally angry patrons. Their time was up just as she had feared and whether he was ready or not to travel they were leaving as soon as it was dark out. She held her footing as she allowed the nurse to slip out of the room past her, stepping out into the hallway herself before shutting the door to create a barrier between the small mob and her injured bounty. The only sort of upper hand she had in this situation was her badge and if they caught the slightest whiff of how thin that thread actually was she'd have more than one injured body on her hands.
"We're leaving in the morning," she bit, crossing her arms over her chest and grimacing at the crusty fabric under her arms. She hadn't even risked going to her truck for a change of clothes and damp rags could only do so much for blood stains. "I'm packing my things now and we'll be out of your hair. He'll go straight to the detention center in July."
The fact that she could literally see the bartender's mind turning over his argument was slightly comical, knowing that he wanted to yell and scream at her some more with his newfound gang of drunkards to back him up. But now she was giving him what he wanted and there was nothing that he could do to harass her any farther. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small notepad, flipping it open before gesturing her hand to his breast pocket where he had a little pen clipped for writing out bills. He grimaced at her grubby hands but handed over the pen, watching her with raised eyebrows as she scribbled a few figures onto the paper in the notepad and ripped it out. When she handed it to him along with his pen back his eyes scanned the paper and his jaw dropped open slightly as he beheld the number circled at the bottom of the note.
"I'll have the station in July wire the fee to you for your generosity. I'll be sure to let them know about the hospitality I was given in such a difficult time."
It was a low blow but something had to be done to buy them a little more time. With the promise of payment and the not so subtle threat about how she'd been treated would keep them off her back for at least a few hours, if not until morning when they would already be gone. She didn't even bother waiting for a reply as she turned and slid back into the room and locked the door behind her. For a second she stood there listening to the sounds of their retreating footsteps until all she could hear was the distant chatter from the main room. By the time the bartender came back she hoped to be long gone so she set to wrapping the man's red coat in a bundle inside her own jacket, using the arms to tie it into a makeshift bag that she could sling over her shoulder at a moments notice. It wasn't until she was double checking the room to be sure she hadn't accidentally left anything behind that she noticed the man on the bed had shifted again, possibly while she was out of the room. She wasn't sure if it was something he'd done unconsciously in his sleep or if he'd somehow been playing possum with her. If it weren't for the fact that the only way out of the room was through the single door behind her she would have found some way to restrain him to the bed, but something told her she wasn't going to have to resort to that. If he did try to make a break for it she knew of several spots that were likely tender enough to put him back down, opening back up the wounds be dammed. There was no chance in hell she had come this far to let him slip away now. All she needed was the cover of night and the closing of the bar to drag him out of there and never turn back.
Of course it took longer than she liked for the bar to empty out, she kept checking every twenty minutes or so to be sure and once the last patron had stumbled half drunk out the front doors she knew it was time. Hopefully the trek to her truck outside would be less disastrous as the trek in had been. There shouldn't be anyone in her way this time around and she was less exhausted than she had been coming in so it was now or never. Throwing her makeshift jacket bag over her shoulder she opened the door as quietly as possible before turning back to try and wrestle the man up off of the bed. She'd seen him shift slightly here and there when she was sure he thought she wasn't looking so she was going to try her best to at least get him to help her a little. Anything would be better than nothing and if he really was coherent enough to be moving around she wasn't going to drag him around.
"Alright, I know you can hear me even if you're not all there, so don't play dumb on me now. We've got to leave now or there's going to be more trouble than you're worth so help me get you out of here if you wanna live to see tomorrow," she hissed under her breath, grabbing his arm and heaving him upward in the bed. When there was no kind of response aside from a soft groan she wondered if maybe she had been imagining the small movements all along. "Of course not, why would I think you'd help me…."
It took every ounce of strength she had in her to wrestle him up off the bed, grunting as she fought to get a good enough hold on him draped over her shoulder again to get him out of the room. She wasn't sure if it was the rest or the desire to get the hell out of dodge, but getting back outside was indeed easier than getting him inside had been. There was a tense moment of fumbling where she thought she might drop him as she tried to unlock her vehicle to shove him into the passenger seat of the beat up gray truck, but he miraculously stayed upright long enough for her to fold him into the seat like a gangly pretzel. If she had been shoved into a seat like that at his height it would have been uncomfortable as hell, but it was the best she could do in the limited amount of time. She took a little more care closing the door to make sure she didn't shut him in it before she rounded to the driver side and climbed in herself, tossing the jackets between them as she shut her door and shoved the key in the ignition. She chanced a glance back at the inn, seeing the bartender glaring out the windows at her as she started the truck and resisted the urge to flip him off as she started the truck and took off into the night.
It wasn't until the small town and it's hostile inn was well in her rear view mirror that she started to relax a little more as she drove, glancing sidelong at the man seated next to her in a slumped mess against the door. She wondered if he'd try to open the door and fall out to get away from her, but the fact that they were literally in the middle of nowhere and the only civilization close enough for him to make it to clearly didn't want him there put her mind at ease. Now that she was less worried about getting him out of there she had time to actually reflect on how it had all gone down and she was now more than certain he was somewhat coherent. His feet hadn't been dragging as much as she lugged him out to her truck by his good arm which meant he had to be assisting her in some way. She would have been irritated at him for playing around if she wasn't thankful for the help in the end. Now if she could just get him to actually give up the act she wouldn't be bored out of her mind for the remainder of the drive. There were obvious questions she needed answered and while she was sure he'd be reluctant to actually answer them, she could berate him into talking about something. But how to get him talking?
"You know, now that I think about it, I didn't buckle him in before we left. Kinda rushing a little back there and I suppose it's not really good for him to be sitting there unbuckled," she hummed, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel lightly as if she were truly talking to herself instead of him. "If something happened and we wrecked…. He wouldn't fit through the windshield would he? Maybe?"
Without even waiting to see if he was going to try and ignore her or pipe up she tapped her foot halfheartedly on the brake pedal, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye to see how he would respond. His body lurched in the seat beside her and instantly slammed forward into the dashboard and her heart dropped. Without even thinking the action through she slammed her foot the rest of the way down onto the breaks in a panic, watching in what felt like a slow motion horror movie as he bounced back in the seat and forward again, hitting the dash again. Now they were sitting in the middle of the desolate road, the man hunched over in his seat, now sporting a new bloody nose. She didn't even have words for how stupid she felt, how horrified that she'd purposely hurt him to try and goad him into revealing if he was awake or just messing with her. She was about to put the car into park and get out to go around to his side of the truck when he slowly turned his head to look at her through squinted, teary blue eyes. For a long time they both just sat there staring at one another in silence, his nose slowly dripping blood down his face onto his pink tinged bandages.
"Tha-That really hurt!" he whined, reaching up slowly to brush the back of his metal hand along his bloody nose with a loud sniffle. "What if I had gone through the windshield! I mean, are you tryin' to kill me or take me in lady?"
"You…," she stammered, pointing over at him as the shock slowly faded and melted into irritation. "You have been awake this whole time! Seriously?! I hauled your ass all the way out to the truck and you just let me!"
"I helped…. A little. I mean, in my defense I am hurt y'know? And this little stunt didn't help at all. And I wasn't awake the whole time. Just since the man started yelling earlier. Geez, I thought you cared a little to at least get me patched up and now this?"
"You could have said something to me! I clearly wasn't going to leave you there with them."
"Maybe not, but you said you're taking me to the July detention center so…. I wasn't sure I should say anything."
The air fell silent between them, the man sniffling dramatically as he tried to stop his nose from dripping. She snorted softly and leaned over to reach toward the glove box. He flinched back from her hand in his seat, frowning warily as she rolled her eyes and popped the glove box open to pull out a glob of tissues she had stuffed in there for emergencies. Once she offered them to him he realized she was being helpful in the tense moment. He grabbed the tissues and began stuffing them unceremoniously up his nose as she reached for the steering wheel and started to drive again. The cab remained silent for a long time, the only sound being his soft sniffles that eventually died out as his nose no doubt clotted and stopped bleeding through the tissues. She'd relaxed into her seat, leaning against the driver side door with one hand on the wheel as they traveled along.
"About that," she mumbled noting how he flinched at the sudden noise. He was a little jumpy but she guessed that should have been expected considering who he was. "I haven't been police in a long time, but they didn't know that. The badge gets me out of tough scrapes sometimes and considering I didn't have anyone to help me back there I used what I had."
A soft kind of realization settled on his face, his eyebrows scrunching together as he processed the information carefully. She wasn't police, sure, but that certainly didn't mean she wasn't going to turn him in for the bounty on his head. It would have been what any other sane person would have done honestly, but this wasn't about that. At least, it wasn't anymore.
"I have some questions and I know you're going to try and dodge them, but let's say for the sake of sparing us both the irritation, just be straight with me. You may be a wanted criminal, Vash, but I don't think that's entirely all there is to it, is there?" He remained silent as she spoke, staring over at her calmly and she took that as a sign to ask whatever questions she had. There was a good chance that he wasn't going to answer them or even tell her the truth but she had to try. "I came looking for you for the bounty, not gonna lie about that, but what I found was not what I was expecting. So, what did you do at that rock face?"
It had been her intention to hunt him down and drag him in to claim the reward on his head, she hadn't cared at first if he was innocent or not. All that mattered was that he was worth more money than she knew what to do with and she needed that money. But when she finally tracked him down she found something she couldn't have been prepared for in a million years. There was an attack of some kind, a car jacking as far as she could tell, where a woman and her small son had been taken hostage by a group of bandits off one of the side roads outside the small town they had left behind. All she knew from the hysterical mother was that they had been attacked, Vash had appeared and…stopped them from hurting her or the child. When she had come across them, he was already a bloody mess, hunched over in front of a small gap in a rock face where he'd stashed the mother and her child as the bandits turned their attack on him once they realized who he was. He'd used his own body to protect those people and yet the wanted posters made it seem like he was a cold blooded monster that killed for pure enjoyment. Something about the entire situation didn't track and she could tell by the solemn look on his face that there was more to it than everyone else knew about.
"What did they tell you happened?" he asked softly, studying her intently as she shrugged. She was trying to be clear that she wanted to hear the story from his side without giving him any clues, trying to gauge just how much he was lying to her. "They would have killed them for the little bit of money they had. I did what I had to because it was the right thing to do."
She let the words sink in, nodding slowly. He did exactly what she'd thought he'd done and it was enough to give her pause when it came to turning him over for the reward. There was no doubt much more to the story, but the way he just settled back in his seat cradling his stomach she knew he wasn't going to elaborate any more than that. Pushing him wasn't going to get her any more information so she left it at that, deciding that they were going to be in for a long, silent trip.
"Alright then, if you say so," she huffed, reaching over to gesture to the seatbelt dangling beside him. "At least buckle yourself in before you really do fly through the windshield. We've got a long way to go."
"Where are you taking me?" he asked quietly, obeying her request to buckle himself in. "And um, what…what do I call you if you're not really an Officer?"
"I'm taking you toward July, like I said. Just not to the detention center. I have a permanent residence there and once you're less likely to fall apart we'll figure out the next step," she said plainly, clicking on the radio and turning the volume down just enough to fill the silence she was sure was about to settle in. "And my name is Liana, but you can call me Lia, everyone else does."
"Lia," he repeated like he was testing the sound of it out before he just nodded. "Thanks. For…y'know. All of it."
Their surroundings were not much different from the area they had left behind. Most of the area surrounding them was barren aside from drying grass, sparse trees and dirt. There was a large city in the center of it, but they thankfully weren't going anywhere near it. She had decided a long time ago to live well outside of the city and closer to the river that separated what was considered the "mainland" and the small offshoot of land they'd left. She wasn't sure why they had decided to call it that considering there was far more to the continent, but it had just stuck. The city was officially named July, everyone had always just called it the mainland. Several miles outside the city where the outskirt buildings were starting to come into view she turned off onto a dirt road that seemed to lead off into the dried up forested area that surrounded the main road. There weren't many places left that were green and lush, most of them artificial and only accessible to those with wealth so it wasn't a surprise to see the dried up grove of trees passing by outside the window. Rain wasn't something they often saw and she often thought it a miracle that the dusty, dried up trees were still standing at all. Of course it was easy to notice them visibly thinning out over the years, but not nearly as fast as she thought they might.
Tucked back into a thicker patch of dying trees was a small, two story house that had seen better days. The whitewashed siding was chipping and the porch was more splinters than beams these days. It wasn't much, but it was home. Vash had been sitting quietly in the passenger seat for most of the ride and she wasn't sure if he was just staying silent or if he was sleeping. It wasn't until she parked the truck under the canopy off the side of the house that she saw him move, glancing around slowly to see where they were. She wondered if he was afraid she might actually turn him in but he didn't seem panicked at all. He just sighed softly and unbuckled himself to step out of the truck slowly. Liana grabbed the bundle of jackets on the seat and shut off the truck as well. For a moment they just stood there on the opposite sides of the truck, Vash glancing around at the modest dwelling before she drew his attention by reaching down into the back bed of the truck under the burlap covering it and wrestled a large, tan duffle bag out of it. Vash's bag.
"I was wondering where that got to," he mumbled, smirking lightly. "Did-Did you take my gun too?" He reached down to pat his right leg where she had indeed found a gun holstered there when she first found him. It hadn't been drawn as far as she could tell and was still fully loaded until she pulled the shells out and tucked them away in a side pocket.
"In the bag. I put what I could in your bag and stashed it," she said as she shrugged the bag over her shoulder and nodded toward the front porch at the back end of the truck. "Let's get inside."
The house was dark in the early morning with the sun just barely starting to warm the sky. Vash waited patiently as she unlocked the door and stepped inside, fumbling along the wall for the light switch before she moved far enough in to give him room to step into the living room. She pointed toward the stairs across the small space, dropping the crusty coats onto the floor near the coffee table.
"There's a spare bed in the room on the right at the top of the stairs. Bathroom to the left," she sighed readjusting his duffle bag on her shoulder. "Get up there before you fall over. I'll haul this up there. I think we could both use some sleep for now and we can figure out the rest of it afterwards. I don't have to explain to you that we're pretty far out from the city and you wouldn't make it if you ran, right? You're not a prisoner here, but I doubt many others out there would be as hesitant to turn you in as I was."
"Right. It's not like I have anywhere else to go anyway," he chuckled, trying to break the tension in the room. "Are you sure you don't mind?"
"If I did, you wouldn't be here. Go on."
He thankfully didn't argue with her, shuffling across the room to slowly haul himself up the steps before he disappeared into the bedroom door on the right. She hovered just long enough to drop his bag inside the door and gestured down the hall to where her room was located. Neither of them said another word as he shut the door and she shambled down the hall completely exhausted. She'd been on the road for weeks now and the entire trip with him had taken its toll. The best she could manage was shutting her own door and locking it before stripping off her dirty pants and shirt before she collapsed onto her bed and snuggled down into the pillows with a sigh of relief. She had no idea if he was even going to be there when she woke up, but she was at least confident that he wasn't going to try and hurt her in anyway if he did stay. After some sleep they could better sort things out.