naloxone | wildin' & westin'

[ when he'd first agreed to help her, he hadn't actually considered the extent that they'd actually be spending time together. pairing up on a job sounded easy enough, but considering how long he'd gone on working on his own, he'd forgotten about the minutes and hours that came stitched in between, when the company becomes so consistent that you even begin to start forgetting when to part ways, when the work stops and somehow they're still there.

briefly, it reminds him of sarah (prompting a sigh that carries something of a relief when he recognizes that she isn't a memory he's forgotten about), to their days of merc work just before they put him on the slap for over two centuries. with all the hours he's had with marta these past weeks, it's been similar enough to the kind of work entanglement he'd had with sarah — just short of spending actual nights together, which he's already put a restriction on in his mind.

but helping her survive this feels safe enough, feels necessary when he knows she's trying as hard as she is, especially after she's granted him a number of favors already. she stitches up his wounds, he could keep her from throwing up all over scorpion's bend. and how to ride a horse apparently. ]

Just stay relaxed while you're up there. They sense that kind of thing. You start freaking out, she's gonna know.

[ watching marta settle up on top of the saddle, kovacs remains below for now, fingers stroking the side of the animal's face to keep it steady, his hat tilted back on his head so he can keep a watchful eye on his partner. ]

[ it's late. so late marta doesn't even dare check what time it is, but by now the adrenaline from the attack has seeped out of her veins and the desert's unforgiving chill has reached her bones, making her lips pale and her teeth chatter. still, she doesn't think to return back to her room at thornbush inn, instead dragging her feet to the saloon like she's being drawn there by some magnetic force.

her body tells her she rest, or if not that then at least tend to the gash above her brow, still dripping blood down the side of her face. there's blood all over the rest of her too, staining her nightgown and her hands, but it isn't hers. it's why she's here, doing what she's about to do.

(not because she's scared, not because she knows he wouldn't be.)

she knocks once, twice. a third time for luck, though it seems a silly thing to wish for now. ]

[ most nights haven't necessarily gone as planned, a sort of regularity that he's gotten used to in this place, but tonight's shatter into reality takes an entirely different turn when he sees her for the first time in well over a month. kovacs hadn't been completely unaware of clara's arrival, having heard earlier in the week that the third and final group had practically crash landed some distance out of town, but he figured he could possibly blend in with the rest of the town to avoid any direct contact, his own scruffy facial hair grown out to hide a bit more of his face, his typical cowboy hat hiding a good degree of his eyes, but kovacs has never considered luck to be something he'd associate with himself, so when he does come face-to-face with clara within the walls of sindown tonight, he can't say he's too surprised that it doesn't go well at all.

after the conversation, it's as if weeks of progression are tossed entirely into waste, catapulted back to the night of christmas, to misery coursing along every vein, every muscle, every bone. he's half-tempted to pull up his unicorn back, scavenging inside for whatever narcotics could shut down his mind most tonight, charging his way back into sindown for the first lady he can tip well enough to take into bed.

but for some reason, when he considers how he wants to spend his coping hours, his thoughts don't drift to the gorgeous women he's seen parade the walls of the pleasure house. instead, he finds himself trapped in the memory of when he'd woken up past that haunting christmas night, to the early hours exhausted in the infirmary bed, eyes blinking to marta curled up in the seat beside him, that cheesy romance novel in her lap. he remembers her not asking questions about what had happened or why he'd recklessly shoved an unknown number of drugs in his body or how he even felt beyond checking for the physical symptoms. he thinks of her voice reading out the pages to him, carrying on with the story once he'd asked her to keep going.

having downed nearly half a bottle of whiskey he'd picked up from some corner he'd shoved it into in the agency office, his feet drag him through the town, half-expecting his subconscious to take him straight back to sindown. instead, when he catches himself standing in front of the thornbush inn, he sighs to himself with a private roll of his eyes, like he's silently judging his own idiocy.

normally, he'd choose to avoid dragging anyone else to join him on his tour of self-torment, but in the past month, he's grown used to having a particular kind of company, a consistency he hasn't had since constantly relying on poe's presence over in the raven hotel back in bay city — and marta's made for more tolerable company than an obsessive, poetic a.i.

fingers gripping the neck of a half-empty bottle hanging in one hand, he knocks on her door with the other once he's made his way inside, letting his body lean into the door frame, practically slumping as he waits for her to answer, not even entirely sure whether she'd even be awake in this excessively late hour of the night. ]

Edited 2022-01-20 02:58 (UTC)

[ the more revelations keep cropping up about their mission, the more marta begins to wonder what she's even doing there. an entire month's head start, and all she's got to show for it is a dusty little shared office and a new regret for ever taking sunblock for granted. she knows she shouldn't be too hard on herself, what with it being her first mission and all, but some evenings she can't drown out the little voice in her head that loves to feed her doubt.

those are the evenings she spends in the saloon, tucking herself into her own little table to try and let the tempered chaos of the space distract her from herself. this particular one sees the aid of a few bottles of beer... perhaps even one too many.

when she spots him entering the saloon and noticing her, she meets his eye for an entire second before she looks away, like that will somehow erase from his notice the flush of her cheeks, the emptiness of the bottles in front of her. she's not ashamed by any means, but it isn't lost on her how this situation is often in the reverse when it comes to them. ]

[ when everyone had first dissolved into ash, marta had all too soon found him. she'd reached out carefully with her fingers, eyes as wide as they often are, bright and hazel, a mirrored match to his own (no, not his own, they're not your eyes, he always hears), honest with concern. he hadn't quite shaken her off, not wanting to rudely discard her good intentions, but he'd insisted he was fine, even if he'd known why she was worried. at the time, he didn't think it would matter.

but with the passing days, he threads the similarities more and more, in ways that hadn't initially been so obvious, the ash upon the ground never quite floating away with the wind, lingering as though it's designated itself to haunt the town for the foreseeable future.

when he dreams, it's never a surprise to find the ash there too. but now it's intertwined with the recent memories of scorpion's bend, a twist to the way he stands in the middle of its central street, its false citizens carrying about their usual routine as he'd grown accustomed to seeing day by day. all at once, they start to scream, fingers beginning to claw at each other's skin like animals, howling with feral cries.

Monsters — we're the monsters! they scream, destroying one another before they collapse on the ground, bodies piling on bodies.

the ash rains from above, always gentle like snow, like it shields away the horror of the bloody scene. but tonight it isn't over. amongst the corpses, there she stands — quell.

in his head, he hears a voice. xichen utters quietly, He told me that pulsefire is used to clean out towns by bandits who are looking for treasure. It leaves nothing living behind.

quell raises up her arm, fingers reaching out to him. Tak— suddenly she burns, too fast to even suffer, flames engulfing her into ash. kovacs screams, but he can't move forward. his feet remain trapped beneath the corpses.

Tak— he hears again. a different voice. he turns to see reileen, his sister reaching out with her fingers the same way quell had done. once more, the pulsefire burns her to nothing.

yet again, Tak— and he turns to see clara standing there. he shakes his head frantically, thinking no, no, no, but all at once, she's lost in the fire.

his body shakes, thinking there can't be more, but then, Tak—

with a slow turn, marta stands with her eyes on him. once again, wide and almost pleading with her worry, the soft stare that mirrors into his own eyes. this time, it's him that's reaching, arm outstretched trying to get to her before it's too late.

the pulsefire burns. ]

No — ! [ he screams out, body trembling, skin damp with sweat, as he sits up from his jarring startle, peering around to find himself in that cramp little office, still on the small mattress he'd found and shoved into the corner for them to camp in. and when he turns, breaths panting heavily, marta's there beside him, untouched by pulsefire, not burned into ash, but alive and breathing. ]

dirty (muddy) saddle party;

is that a gun in your pocket;

there's something lost in my head; could you help me fix it?

there's a story at the bottom of this bottle;

she woke me from a comatose sleep, took my hand for i was in too deep;