Chapter Text
Now, Boothill ain't one to talk shit about people he don't know nothing about, but you can learn a lot about someone through their actions. For that alone, the IPC's been on his shitlist for a good while. Oh, sure, they spin a fine tale about “serving the amber lord” and “preserving planets”, but nothing of what Boothill’s seen actually backs that up. His planet, his people , bombed to near extinction just so the IPC could harvest its resources. Those money-grubbing sons of bitches don’t have a care in the world beyond what lines their own pockets. Ever since he struck out on his lonesome as a Galaxy Ranger he hasn’t thought twice about robbing freight ships and taking whatever looks expensive.
Punish the wicked and don’t kill an innocent, Galaxy Rangers only got those two rules, everything else is up to his discretion, so he does as he damn well pleases.
He’s become something of a favorite with fences around the universe, selling what he’s got without much of a care of if they’re short-changing him or not. Boothill cares less about the money and more that the IPC isn’t turning a profit, and aside from bullets, booze, and repairs to his ship and exoskeleton, Boothill doesn’t need much. His good rapport with the black markets gets him some valuable intel from time to time. An IPC ship route, a lead on Oswaldo Schneider, or a real evil sonuvabitch who’s got what’s coming to them.
Francis is one of the more honest folks Boothill’s worked with. A few years younger than Boothill, but lightyears ahead of him when it comes to tech. Boothill’s not too shabby himself, especially thanks to his cybernetic enhancements, but by the time his systems crack a door’s passcode Francis can map out a target’s bank information – shell companies, off-planet accounts, the works – and drain them dry. He’s got this shit-eating grin on his face when he does it, too. Scary as hell to watch. Boothill supposes being from Punklorde’ll do that to you, not that he’s met many of them in the flesh. Plenty o’them try to hack into his exoskeleton, though, prolly made it into some kinda game amongst the young'uns. They’re always in for a nasty surprise when his firewalls kick half of them out on their ass. Whoever gets past that gets a pretty nasty piece of malware for their trouble – the doctor doesn't appreciate people tryna mess with his work, y’see.
Frightening hacking skill aside, Francis is an alright guy. A real righteous-type that likes to paint himself as one of those gentleman thieves – stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, shit like that. If the goods can’t be traced back to some bigwig with more money than sense, he haggles as low as he can, to the point most people would rather shoot him than trade with him. That little peculiarity made Francis partial to Boothill, who brazenly showed up one day with a haul of IPC goods with the identification tags completely untouched. He doesn’t always pay full price – he’s a businessman, unlike Boothill – but Boothill always brings enough that it’s never a problem. The few times they’ve gone out for drinks have ended in disaster, though. Kid can’t hold his liquor for shit, but he keeps trying to keep pace with Boothill even though they both know the outcome: Francis, drunk off his ass, and Boothill, slinging his scrawny frame over a shoulder so he can sleep it off on the spare cot in Boothill’s ship.
Francis was all too willing to pass on some information during their least meetup, free of charge. That alone was enough to raise an eyebrow at, but Boothill knew he was in for it the second he saw Francis' usual smile pulled back into a vicious snarl.
It's a rare day Boothill goes hunting for any specific man beside Schneider, but once Francis spits it out between gritted teeth he finds he doesn't mind putting that grudge on the wayside for a few system hours.
The facility looks just godawful from the outside. Golden colored material and windows that glimmer like the most obnoxious rocks you've ever seen, the place's built on a planet bought and owned by a single man (and ain't the thought of that enough to make someone sick). Armed IPC guards man the front gates while security cameras spin around a set scope. Boothill puts two bullets in the guards -- one each, right through the head -- and makes his way to the entrance.
Francis’s voice crackles in over Boothill’s comms. “I’ve hacked a satellite passing over this position. If any ships try to take off, I’ll shoot them down and mark the location on your GPS.”
“Thank you kindly, Francie.”
“You–! My name is Francis, cowboy! Francis!”
Boothill smirks, baring his teeth to no one in particular. “That’s what I said.”
Francis splutters like a cat dunked in the river before growling. Boothill imagines him making a not-so-nice gesture to the screen he’s watching from. “I can block any SOS calls for one hour,” Francis tells him, falling back into that professional tone he gets when they’re on a mission. Kid knows when to put aside the schoolyard fights to buckle up for something real. There’s one thing that can rally people from all walks of life, young, old, evil or good, and that’s a common enemy.
Boothill checks his revolver more out of habit than real need. “Only an hour?” he asks, counting his bullets before clicking the chamber back in place. “Pretty sloppy for someone from Punklorde.”
“What, are you saying that you need more time? Pretty sloppy for a Galaxy Ranger.”
Boothill laughs freely. Shame this ain’t their usual kind of mission, he’d like to keep it going, feed the fire a little and listen to the kid yell at him over the comms, but today calls for a little more professionalism from him. Today, Boothill’s out for blood. Just remembering what Francis told him has his trigger finger twitching. It ain’t like him to get worked up over a job, but sometimes exceptions have to be made.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to disable the security feeds?” Francis asks.
“Nah, I want him to know I’m comin’.” And by the sounds of surprised yelling deeper in the building, they sure as hell do now. “I’m going dark. I’ll open up comms again when everything’s said and done.”
“Suit yourself. Good luck, Boothill.”
With his pistol as his side, Boothill doesn’t need any ‘luck’, but he lets it stand, picking his boot up and kicking the front door straight off its hinges. The doors slam to the ground, echoing through a massive reception hall.
The place is gaudy as hell, lined with a crimson carpet interwoven with gold thread. Expensive-looking doodads and art pieces line the edges of the carpet, leading up to a staircase leading further in. A handful of guards rush in, no better equipped than the two out front. Boothill grins, baring fanged teeth as he spins his revolver. Five against one, Boothill likes his odds.
”Fire!“ The one in the center cries, leveling his weapon and aiming. In the time he took to waste his breath, Boothill's already fired. His aim hits true, shattering the IPC guard's mask and sending him ass-over-teakettle onto the floor. The other four panic, pulling their weapons up to fire, but Boothill ducks behind one of those mighty expensive-looking pillars. The vase on top of it bursts into millions of shards, and Boothill hears one of the lackeys cry about how it’ll get deducted from his paycheck. Boothill peeks out from his cover and solves that problem for him with a bullet to the head.
The remaining three try to adjust their positions for a better angle on him, but Boothill’s faster, standing up with his pistol at his hip as he unloads the rest of his bullets. Three shots, three thuds, no more noise. Boothill spins his pistol and holsters it, stepping over the bodies on his way further into the facility. Any other job and he might have spared them -- but the nature of this mission's drained any pity he has for the people in this building.
You don't deal in people and get to walk away alive.
He makes his way to an important-looking door and kicks that open, too, an echoing bang filling the massive room it leads into. It's no fancier than any of the other rooms Boothill's combed through, which doesn't mean much since everything in this damn place is probably worth more than Boothill's ship. A massive couch sits ahead of him, it's back to him and facing an expansive setup of screens, their glow casting everything a clinical sort of blue. Boothill steps forward, his hand never leaving his revolver as he inspects the displays, and what he sees makes his trigger finger itch like nothing else.
A giant maze, with bodies strewn about like a child who left their toys out. Male, female, young, old, Boothill sees people of all kinds laid out where they died, their empty eyes and tears still wet on their faces. Some hold melee weapons, others don't, but from what Boothill can see, none of them died peacefully.
”Fudge me,“ he mutters to himself, unable to look away from the carnage. ”This is one sick son of a nice lady.“
Footsteps come from down the hall, Boothill aims and shoots, listening to the body thud without ever looking away from the grisly scene before him.
A little girl is laid out on her back, her throat a violent collage of purple and red. Someone took the time to close her eyes.
Boothill empties his revolver into the screens, the displays sputtering out in a shower of sparks, and stalks out of the room. He’s gonna drag every one of these sons a bitches into the afterlife, he doesn’t care how long it takes. If the SOS calls go through, all the better – it’s always easier when your prey comes to you.
There’s grunts and cronies at every corner, yelling shit to each other and trying to aim between his eyes. It’s like Boothill kicked a monstrously sized hornet’s nest.
Bang bang bang!
Thud, thud, thud.
Helluva lot easier to shoot than a hornet, though.
He stands over the piled-up bodies of another squad and reloads his pistol, the small click as he flicks the cylinder back into place is drowned out by the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from one of their shattered masks. He steps over them like the trash they are and makes his way further into the building.
He moves with purpose, his mind a whirlwind of things as he clears out the rest of the facility with near surgical precision, if he says so himself. With no ships to escape on and no way to call for help, there's no escape for Boothill's target. Even if he did get away, Boothill would chase him down, no matter the place, all for the privilege to look him in the eye and put a bullet between them.
Boothill inspects the final door with a sneer, reloading his revolver with one hand. It looks pricey, made of rich-colored wood and carved by an expert hand. It would be a real shame to break something this nice, but Boothill's far past caring. The hydraulics in his legs whir and shift as he diverts power to them and kicks the final door down between him and his target.
Just to see that someone else beat him to it.
There’s a young man standing over the body of one Aventurine of Stratagems, wearing a bloodstained potato-sack tunic. Said Stoneheart has collapsed to the floor, his eyes still wide in shock, a limp hand clutching at the chunk torn out of his throat.
Boothill flicks his eyes back up to the young man – he’d still be considered a boy on Boothill’s home planet. Blood smears his face, some of it his, most of it the Stoneheart’s. His nose is crooked, the area under his eyes a deep, mottled red from the break. One eye is almost swollen shut, but the good one pins Boothill in place with its ferocity. Electric blue near the pupil and a vibrant purple at the edges, Boothill’s never seen someone with eyes like that, but he knows the look in them all too well.
Boothill holsters his gun and puts his hands up in the universal “I come in peace” gesture. “Easy there, bud. Don’t gotta try and skin me with yer eyes.” Not that he has any real skin to flay.
That one eye squints slightly. Even with the weapon holstered, he doesn’t believe Boothill’s harmless for one second. Good instincts, Boothill makes a note of them.
“Who are you?” His voice rasps from dehydration, rolling through the room like a stray tumbleweed.
“Th’name’s Boothill. At yer service. I came here to collect a bounty.” He nods to the body on the floor, “but it looks like you beat me to it.”
The boy’s good eye never looks away, watching, calculating. He licks blood from his teeth and spits something out – a piece of flesh, Boothill’s willing to bet. “You’re not part of the IPC?” He asks.
Were it anyone else, Boothill might’a shot them for the assumption. But the kid’s been through hell and back, he can’t blame a little caution. Caution’s smart. Keeps you from getting stabbed in the back when things go too south to salvage. Instead, Boothill chuckles, low and smooth. “Do I look like one of them muddle-fudgers?”
The boy blinks, his face twisting in confusion. “What?”
Boothill clicks his tongue with a growl, regretting it when the boy bristles. Flighty, ready to run at the first sign of trouble – Boothill makes note of that, too. “Someone fudged with my synesthesia beacon,” he explains. “I try to curse and it just comes out as ‘fudge this’ or ‘what a load of ship’.”
The boy blinks again, his bad eye spasming weakly. The hand that struck him was big, the broken bits of skin around his eye suggesting the attacker wore rings of some sort. Boothill's eyes drop to the cooling corpse of his target, and sure as anything, a few bloodied rings adorn those purpling fingers. “Looks like he got a few good hits on you,” Boothill says to the boy.
The kid stares Boothill right in the eye and tilts his chin up, defiant. Even beat to hell and back the kid's got spunk, Boothill can appreciate that.
Something clatters in the room to the left. Coulda been something Boothill nudged a little too far off its pedestal, coulda been a body slipping to the ground after leaning on the wall for so long. Either way, the boy's head snaps to it as fast as a whip crack. The tendons of his neck strain against his skin like stings on a guitar, bare of any baby-fat and bearing something that makes Boothill wish he'd come just a bit sooner to put a bullet in the bastard's head himself.
A slave brand, black in the center but still red at the edges. Had to have been applied at the start of the month at the very earliest.
”Ain't no one breathing here but you and me now,“ Boothill assures the kid. How old is he? Boothill can't rightly say, all the usual tells are muddled by blood and abuse.
The kid turns back to face Boothill, a new, calculating look in his eye. “So, what was this supposed to be before I ruined your carefully made plans? A rescue, or a stickup?”
He’s getting chattier, that tension in his shoulders slipping just a smidge. He may not trust Boothill, but he doesn’t think Boothill’s part of the group that put him in chains. That’s good, that’s progress. “Don't see why it can't be both,” Boothill says amicably. “Way I was planning it, that sorry sack of ship wouldn't care much about his things in this life after I sent him to the next. Imagine my surprise when you did my work for me.“
Something twists in the kid's expression, turning sour, violent. He winds his leg back and kicks the body in front of him. Boothill realizes the kid's barefoot, too, the soles of his feet crusted with blood from where he cut them on something sharp. ”He liked to gamble,” the kid starts, his tone low and resentful. “Bought me for sixty copper coins, along with a few other slaves. Told us all to put on a show before he tossed us all in that maze to fight each other to the death.” He looks back up at Boothill, a vicious, manic grin stretching across a split lip and bloody teeth. Boothill’s seen kinder grins on a rabid dog. ”'All or nothing', he just loved to say that. So, when I won his little tournament I took his life, too. All or nothing, right?“
The kid's eyes don't reflect any light, Boothill realizes. Like a well you can't see the bottom of, eating up anything that tries to shine on it.
A battle royale between slaves, he already assumed as much from what he saw in the monitor room, but it's different hearing it from a survivor. ”Well, we can't stay here much longer,“ Boothill starts slowly. “The IPC’s gonna be on this place like flies on ship in a few system hours.
”Probably,“ the kid agrees. Boothill doesn't care for that easy tone of his. It's too light, like he's a kite without a string, drifting wherever the wind takes him. Like he ain't got anything tying him to life.
“Well, we don’t wanna be anywhere near here when that happens. Come on,” Boothill jerks his head to the door, “there's plenty of room in my ship for a good haul and an extra passenger.”
“But why?” the kid asks. He’s drifting, his eyes going unfocused for a second. “How could I, who was only worth sixty copper coins, be more valuable than what you could cram into the space I’d take up?” He makes a careless gesture to some of the decorations in the room before reaching for a paperweight on the desk. “Even this is worth more than me,” the kid says, inspecting the object before throwing it to Boothill in an underhand toss. Boothill catches it and inspects it for himself. A solid block of some red gemstone or the other, cut in a way that it shines no matter what angle the light hits it at. Thing is, Boothill doesn’t give a rat’s ass how nice-looking some rock is.
For something so pretty, it doesn’t take much for it to break. Bits and splinters of stone shoot out from Boothill’s fist, striking the wall and dropping to the floor. He wipes the gemstone dust off his palm while the kid stares at him in complete shock. He wasn’t expecting Boothill to do that, that’s for sure.
It’s not just a matter of not wanting to leave this kid alone. If Boothill listens to this kid, leaves him here for the IPC to find, they’re definitely going to put him to death – a death Boothill could have prevented. He might as well shoot the kid himself.
Punish the wicked and don’t kill the innocent. Those are the rules.
“Kid,” Botthill starts. “I don’t give a hoot what you think you’re worth. You’re human, you’re alive, and I’d be a real shiphead of a Galaxy Ranger to leave you behind so I can line my own pockets.” He takes a step forward, the kid doesn’t react. Boothill pushes his luck and takes another. Still no response. “You can act like you don’t care all you like, but if you really didn’t give a ship, you woulda died in that maze.”
The option Boothill’s offering isn’t much better. Even if Francis wipes the security feeds, neither of them are skilled enough with memoria. A few IPC-funded memokeepers and they’ll have Boothill and the kid’s faces on every wanted poster across the galaxy. Boothill was already well on his way to intergalactic infamy, but this kid… Boothill doesn’t know him from a hole in the wall, but he can say for sure the kid didn’t ask for this. He’s just a boy who got caught up in a shit situation. Still, he’s got a spark – he wouldn’t have torn out Aventurine’s throat if he didn’t. Even when the situation’s gone to shit, when everything’s against him, the kid keeps going, playing the cards he’s been dealt.
Boothill knows what that’s like.
He holds out his hand, the matte metal of his palm illuminated in the overhead light. “Tell me something’,” he starts, “are you really gonna give that man the satisfaction of breaking you? Or are you gonna help me ransack this place before getting the heck out of dodge?”
The kid stares at him. For a second, Boothill thinks he spots a glimmer of something in those deep-well eyes.
His hand’s nothing but skin and bone, but it barely shakes when it settles in Boothill’s mechanical palm, stepping over the body of a Stoneheart and shaking his hand firmly. “Where do we start?” He asks.
Boothill’s grin is all teeth. “There’s a few places I want to hit up, but first: what’s your name, kid?”
The kid pauses, opening his mouth like he’s about to say something before clicking it shut. He sends a glance to the body on the floor. When he faces Boothill again, his one good eye shines with vindictive triumph. “Aventurine,” he says. “I killed him, so I get everything. Even his name.” Then, softer, more to himself, “all or nothing.”
Well, far be it from Boothill to give someone shit for going by an alias. Kid’s more than earned it, too. “Nice to meet ‘ya, Aventurine. Now, let’s get to picking this place clean.”
Boothill goes for the shelves off to the side of the room, pocketing anything that might fetch a good price. The paintings might be worth a hundred of what he pockets, but he needs to keep his hands mostly free in case the kid – Aventurine – tries anything. The last thing on Boothill’s mind is hurting him after he’s been through so much, but he didn’t make it this far and for this long without being prepared. Desperate people do stupid shit all the time, and this kid’s about as desperate as they come.
Aventurine kneels over the body of his name’s predecessor, struggling to pull the rings off of stiff fingers and muttering under his breath. He takes the bracelet, a watch, and the solid gold necklace before rising and moving to the desk to scrounge about in there. He keeps his eyes on Boothill, too, when he thinks Boothill can’t see it, but there’s a lack of intent in them that has Boothill lightening up on his vigilance. The kid’s not planning anything. If anything, he’s doing the same thing as Boothill: preparing for an attack.
They move through the rest of the building, taking anything that isn’t nailed down as long as they can fit it on their person. Aventurine finds a duffel bag in the guard barracks and starts using that, though he’s so weak from malnutrition he struggles to carry it once it’s halfway full. Boothill holds out a hand to take it off him, but Aventurine just clutches it to himself tighter. Message received.
“Wait,” Aventurine says, stopping at the mouth of a hallway near the main entrance. “I need– I need to go to the slave barracks. Some of my things are back there.”
There’s a desperate edge to Aventurine’s voice, and Boothill suspects he’ll go down there with Boothill or without him. It’d be better to follow along, there’s no telling if a stray guard decided to hole up in there and wait for everything to settle down. After doing so much to stay alive, it’d be a damn shame if the kid bit it now. “Lead the way,” Boothill says. “They let you keep your things?”
“They took anything that was made from gemstones or metal, or anything that could be used as a weapon. They didn’t care to take away anything else,” his voice is soaked in relief at that last part.
He leads Boothill to the end of the hallway, drifting his hands across the wall until they find purchase on a divot. The wall shudders when he pushes down, a section of the wall retreating and pulling to the side. Well I’ll be damned, Boothill thinks, staring down at the staircase revealed to him. Aventurine descends, his shaky hand on the wall to keep balance. Boothill follows behind, looking around and cataloging things as they go.
The cells can barely be called that. Barely two by two meters, a metal bucket in the corner and a lump of straw right next to it. Boothill’s been tossed into drunktanks more accommodating than this. Some of the walls have markings – scratched onto the stone by bloodied nails, counting the days as they passed. Aventurine doesn’t pause to inspect any of it, moving to the last cell on the right and stepping inside. Boothill stays in the hall, looking around at the hell-on-earth the IPC allowed to exist. Boothill’s seen cruelty, he’s seen greed, he’s seen violence, but this… this would boil his blood if he had any left in him. Bastard deserved more than a chunk of his neck getting torn out. If Boothill had his way, he’d’ve shot the man’s kneecaps off, then his fingers, then his elbows. Then, with the bastard barely clinging to life, Boothill would’ve tossed him out in the sun for the wild animals to feast on. But even carrion feeders wouldn’t touch someone that rotten.
Aventurine returns from the cell, a ratty old shirt clutched in his free hand, stained with old blood and worn out at the seams. “I’m ready to go.” He says, tucking the shirt away into his duffel bag.
Boothill swallows, looking around at the cells. He counts fifteen on each side, thirty in total “Are there any more slave barracks?” Did anyone else survive this sick man’s cruelty?
Aventurine smiles, it comes off more as a grimace. “He threw all of us in that maze. I’m the lone survivor.” For a moment, his mouth twitches into something bitter before it smoothes out again.
Boothill stomps on the urge to go back and unload his revolver in that bastard’s skull. Their hour is almost up. Any extra time – minutes, seconds, milliseconds — to put some distance between themselves and this planet is time well spent. “C’mon, we gotta vamoose before the IPC realizes what we did.” And yes, he means ‘we’. Boothill may have killed all the guards, but Aventurine’s the one who killed the bigwig. That makes them partners in crime.
Aventurine has to shield his face when they step out into the daylight, squinting until his good eye is almost as shut as his bad one. Boothill walks slow until the kid adjusts, talking as they go. “I had to land a bit of a ways away to keep them from seeing me,” Boothill says. “Can’t do nothing about the heat, but there’s plenty of water back on the ship.” And, if Boothill’s remembering correctly, some liquid meal packets – leftovers from Francis’ inevitable hangovers. Kid could use a little extra meat on his bones. Boothill’s pa would take one look at this kid and demand he step inside for a hot meal. The thought brings up old memories and the pain that comes with them, but a little bit of comfort, too. The universe and all its bullshit can kick him around as much as it likes, but it can’t beat his pa’s kindness out of him, and what a relief that is.
The Lone Star is a beauty of a ship, sleek, gunmetal gray with flashes of red along the panel seams. Custom-built, she took quite the sum of credits to commission, but damn if she isn’t worth every bit of it. The ship registers his biochip once he’s in range, the door opening with a hiss and a staircase descending down to meet them. Boothill hops inside and doesn’t check to see if Aventurine follows, resting his cowboy hat on the pilot’s seat before turning his comms on again. “Heya Francis. Job’s done.”
Francis’ voice comes in over the ship comms, clearer than he was in Boothill’s ear. “I see that. Did you grab any sort of datachip? Something I can pull intel from?”
“Aw, Francie, it’s like you don’t know me.” Boothill twirls a little datachip no longer than a pencil between the servos of his hand. “Got company, too, a survivor. The dang clock-sticker had ‘em fight to the death in a battle royale typa thing. Fudging whackjob.”
Francis doesn't even bite back at Boothill for the pet name, muttering a quiet curse under his breath. Boothill envies the brat for it, he can only curse to his heart’s content in his own head, and that ain’t a very nice place to be. “I can’t promise much until I see what’s on that datachip,” Francis tells him, “but if it’s any kind of proof of his involvement with the slave trade, I’m leaking that shit to anyone with bandwidth. How’s the survivor?”
“Quiet type,” Boothill says, leaning back in his seat and resting the back of his hands behind his head. “Shoulda seen it for yourself. Fudger ripped out the head honcho’s throat with his bare–”
There’s a soft click behind Boothill, the sound of the safety switching off one of his guns.
Boothill goes quiet, “I’ll call ya right back Francie. Gotta solve something lickety-split.” He ends the call before Francis can respond and gets up slow-like, turning around to see Aventurine leveling a pistol right between Boothill’s eyes. “I’d put that down, if I was you,” Boothill says slowly. “You’re gonna get hurt if you play with that like it’s a toy.”
Leaving his weapons out in the open, that was a right stupid move on his end. He never considered the kid was just waiting ‘till Boothill led him back to his ship – one without any IPC trackers. He’s usually got a good sense for when someone else is schemin’ against him, but Aventurine kept his cards damn close to his chest. Boothill didn’t sense a hint of malice, and the strangest part about it is that he still doesn’t. Malice ain’t the same as fear.
Aventurine’s eyes shine in the sterile lighting of the Lone Star . Boothill recognizes the look, he saw it too many times to count while homesteading his cattle, back when his home planet wasn’t a ball of ashen waste. That right there? That’s the look of a desperate animal, cornered and willing to bite. The kid hasn’t wiped the blood away from his mouth yet – visible proof he’ll do anything to get out alive, whatever it takes. “And why would I trust you?” The kid asks. His voice trembles at the edges, like a spitting-mad farmcat.
“Cause I ain’t like those IPC folks,” Boothill says, cool as a damn cucumber, if he says so himself. “You’re scared, I get that. You just went through heck on earth – I get that, too. But let’s say you shoot me, you’re not gonna get very far after that.”
“I don’t know,” the corners of the kid’s mouth twitch up into another manic grin, shakily baring his teeth – the whites of them stark against the dried blood on his lips. “My luck’s taken me this far, who’s to say it won’t take me further?”
Boothill eyes the hands holding the gun, how they shake but try to hold steady. If the gun goes off, there’s a chance the recoil will throw the shot off, but that’s no guarantee. “You fancy yourself a bettin’ man?” Boothill asks, subtly flexing the fingers of his left hand.
“I do.”
“Well, I can’t say the same for me.” He finishes the triggering sequence for the revolver in his arm and fires. People can badmouth him till the cows come home, but one thing they can’t say is that he ever misses. He hits the gun at just the right angle to send it flying outta the kid’s hands. He doesn’t flinch when it goes off, but the kid does, giving Boothill the time he needs to rush forward and twist the kid’s arms back till his chest is pressed against the wall of the ship. Terror bleeds into Aventurine’s eyes, fading into a grim sort of acceptance, the same kind he had while accepting his fate at the hands of the IPC. Those are the eyes of a man who wants to die. Boothill’s seen it enough times in the reflection of his ship’s windshield. A look like that has no business being on a boy this young.
“I’m gonna let you go,” Boothill tells him, stern-like. “And when I do, you’re not gonna try any foolish ship like that again. If you do, I’mma knock your lights out and hog-tie you till I find a planet to drop you on.” It’d be somewhere friendly to refugees without a travel permit, but the kid doesn’t need to know that.
Aventurine scowls. It looks ridiculous with half his face smushed against the Lone Star.
“You understand, Aventurine?”
The kid lowers his eyes, defeated – for now. “I understand.”
“Good. Glad we reached an understanding.” Boothill lets him go, watching him regain his footing before turning and gathering up all the weapons strewn throughout the ship. Kid’s an opportunist, best not to leave any opportunities lying about. There’s a safe built into the back of his ship, meant for his more valuable hauls. He pops all his weapons in there. His guns, his knives, anything that could be turned into a makeshift weapon, too. Aventurine watches all of this, still standing right where Boothill left him.
When the safe seals shut with a weighty ker-thunk, Boothill turns around, dusting his hands and declaring, “now, let’s get you some water.” Lucky for him, there’s still a few bottles hidden in the little nook Francis likes to crash in. He grabs one and brings it over, holding it out for Aventurine to take.
Aventurine stares at the offered water like it’s gonna bite him, his good eye flicking up to Boothill, trying to see if this is some kinda trick. “Why help me? I just held a gun to your head.”
“You held a gun a few feet from my head,” Boothill corrects. If the kid had put the gun to Boothill’s head, he wouldn’t have had to resort to shooting it outta his hand. Kid’s ‘bout as light as a newborn calf right about now, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to slap the gun away. “Look, you don’t know me from a hole in the wall, but I’m tryin’ to show that I'm decent folk. Can’t blame someone for tryna stay alive. Now, if you try that type of nonsense again, that’ll be a different story. I’m kind when I wanna be, but my pa didn’t raise no naive fool.” He shakes the water bottle still in his hand, the liquid sloshing around. Aventurine’s eyes flick back to the bottle, his tongue running over dry lips. He takes the bottle with a shaking hand, flinching back when Boothill suddenly says, “ah, ship. Lemme get you somethin’ to wipe your face with. Don’t got any showers – metal body, y’see? – but I reckon I got a rag we can wet.”
Boothill keeps his ears craned for any shenanigans, but Aventurine’s right where he left him when Boothill comes back, a clean rag in hand. He gently takes the water bottle from Aventurine, flicking the cap off and dousing one half of the rag in one go. It doesn’t do a perfect job, but it gets rid of the worst of what’s crusted on his chin and mouth, leaving the skin stained a faint red. Either way, he’s clean for the most part, which was the whole point. Aventurine slings the rag over his shoulder and tosses his head back, guzzling the rest of the water like, well, a man in the desert.
Boothill clicks his tongue when Aventurine inevitably gets some down the wrong pipe, hunching over to cough and wheeze. “You gotta take it slow,” he tuts, “small sips, or you’re gonna make yourself sick.”
Aventurine doesn’t reply, but he does listen, finishing the bottle much slower than how he started. Boothill grabs him another bottle, with the unspoken instruction to drink slowly, and gets back in the pilot’s seat. He clicks a button on the control panel and grins. “Sorry ‘bout that, Francie, had to sort some stuff out. We’ll be heading to the usual spot to do business, sound good?”
All he gets from the other line is a deep sigh.