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[lastgunslinger]

Argument.

Five. Then Desmond died.

Then there were four.

Two days later Jamie DeCurry was killed by sniperfire.

Now Alain was screaming.

Roland stands at the cavemouth on Jericho Hill. His eyes are wide with horror.

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[lastgunslinger]

The first thing Roland notices when he awakens is the stench. Someone's bowels let go. Not his, though -- the ones of the man on top of him. The corpse is huge, and it's hard to shift -- but he tries.

His head hurts like hell.

But then --

Voices. "Fuckin' gunslingers, how many of 'em were left, how much damage they did, did you see -- "

Roland secures his guns.

Not time to die. Not yet. He's made it this far.

-- but what's that? It's -- the horn. He doesn't remember picking it up. But he might have. The whole battle is a blur, now.

It's time to play dead, if there's any hope at all of continuing to the Tower. He looks inward, to do as he'd been taught by Cort not too terribly long ago, to put himself into a trance --

-- something is not right.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Hile, gunslinger.

This is fuckin' stupid. Howdy, I'm a voice in your head. Ain't there--

Then, suddenly, light.

It's Milliways.

Or a reasonable facsimile. It's a little dead--only two people here--and it gets fuzzy unless you look hard. And it's got a good bit of the Traveller's Rest in Mejis mixed in--Bernard would never stand for the mutant stag head.

Anyway, it's a bar, and there's a table, and sitting on one side of it is a young man--no more than 27--with fine fair hair and beard and typical gunslinger's wardrobe--wide-brimmed hat, long black coat, jeans, boots--and double strapped pistols and cold blue eyes that ought to be familiar.

Childe Roland sees them in the mirror every morning when he shaves, after all.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland stares. Looks around him.

Looks before him.

Hands hang idle by his sides. By his holsters.

Low: "Tell me who you are, gunslinger. If gunslinger is what you are. And tell me where we are."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe sighs. He should have known. He's going to be expected to explain, as if he knew any more than this Roland.

"I'm no gunslinger, and we're inside your mind." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at a door in the wall. There's no knob on this side. "I came in here through that door an' I can't get out. You didn't see it followin' along behind when you turned your head, huh?"

[lastgunslinger]

Roland sees the door, now. It's closed.

"No." Roland's senses are still thrumming, and he's trembling slightly. It's difficult to come down from an adrenaline high with no warning. "How the fuck did you get inside my head? And who the fuck are you?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe sighs again. "You can call me Blondie. Plenty of people have." He fumbles in a pocket, focuses his imagination. "Cigar?"

"Somebody put the door up and gave me a key and a reason to go through. As a trap for both of us, I reckon. Enemy of yours--name of Walter."

[lastgunslinger]

"Don't know anybody by that name."

Roland smokes.

"If it was a trap, why'd you do it?" Flat, with no scorn.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"I had a good reason, and I reckoned I could beat it," Joe says. He may sound slightly smug.

"Didn't quite reckon on the fucker closin'. As you can see it, don't open from this side. When we weren't in here, I could see it when you looked over your shoulder, bobbing along."

"Now, on the other side of that door, it can be opened. But only you and me can open it, and we gotta have a password and a key too."

[lastgunslinger]

"You're here," says Roland. "So we can't get it open. Is that what you're saying?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe smiles. It's very small and very thin. "Well. Not exactly."

"I don't suppose you're familiar with the idea of doors that lead to other wheres and whens yet?"

[lastgunslinger]

Roland stares.

He shakes his head.

Though if worlds are circled around the Tower --

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe exhales disspiritedly. He racks his memory. For anything Roland might have said--

No. Not said. Read. The first book. (And for some reason, the temperature (http://www.livejournal.com/community/milliways_bar/3428369.html?thread=135062545#t135062545) in the not'bar begins to rise.)

"Walter's also gone by the name--" Dammit, books are not Joe's favorite things, but names are his specialty. "Marten Broadcloak."

"As for doors--I come from your future, in a different where. The door is there."

[lastgunslinger]

And Roland's eyes flare, at that. "That son of a bitch."

"You come from my future." There's a bit of disbelief in his voice. "You don't talk like anyone I've ever heard." Pause. "You could just be one of Marten's tricks. He disappeared a year or two ago."

He stubs out the cigar and glares at Blondie.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"A different where," Joe repeats. "I'm not of Mid-World."

"There's nothing I can do to prove this to you, son," says Joe dryly. "Fortunately, I don't have to. Do you remember picking up that horn? No? I do. See, apparently these doors give you the whip hand."

Joe gestures at the observation window--yes, it's here, too--with his cigar.

It's black. Joe closes his eyes. And opens them. The window opens too, revealing the unappetizing view from a heap of corpses.

"See, fortunately for me, if you want to see your Tower, you'll have to go along with my plan." He sticks the cigar back in his mouth. "And fortunately for you, I got one."

[lastgunslinger]

"I'm not your son." Instant. Angry.

Steven Deschain's death is still near, even two years later.

He looks out the window.

And back at Blondie.

"Talk."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"You got certain stuff now you'll still have when I know you. The guns. A purse you pay for shit out of. The key came through with me--it was actually a Tarot card."

"You dropped it, where you shot your friend. That's where I came in. You gotta go back there and get it back. And keep it, until the day it comes in handy. I can give you the password."

Joe smirks. "I knew that fucker underestimated me. If I can get my hands on seventy thousand dollars, openin' one fuckin' door ain't shit."

[lastgunslinger]

Where you shot your friend.

For a moment he looks stricken. He bows his head, closes his eyes.

And Cuthbert's dead, too.

This means that Roland Deschain, son of Steven, is the last gunslinger of Gilead.

He never wanted that. From dinh of a ka-tet to alone, every friend taken from him -- he never wanted that. Never.

But it's what he's got.

Roland looks back up at Blondie, now. "Two thousand men stand in between me and that door." Calm. He doesn't say it like he can't do it. Because he can, and he knows it. "How's opening the door going to help me get to the Tower, other than getting you the fuck out of my head?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"You'll make it. I seen you, didn't I?" He shrugs. "That's exactly how it'll help you. Because--I don't want to live in your dried-up ol' world. I surely don't. But I don't want to see your fuckin' Tower, either."

It's only as he says it Joe realizes, gladly, it's true.

"I won't go, Roland. Certainly not as a voice in your head. I'll take your body for my own, before it comes to that." Joe looks him dead in the eye, blue against blue, and it is unmistakable. He would do it. He would absolutely do it. "And I can."

"Now I could go for that card myself. But you're faster and better with this body." He sniffs. "But you gotta decide soon, 'cos they're gonna burn the bodies. Smell that kerosene?"

[lastgunslinger]

Roland is coming to realize that he hates this man.

"I'll do it."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe smiles. It's sharp and predatory. "Excellent."

"You're pissed off now. And you'll be pissed off later. I don't reckon you much like me in my when either. But it don't matter. You'll have other people--real gunslingers and not busted down bounty hunters whose girlfriends you don't cotton to--an' you'll like them just fine."

"But me--you need me." He stubs out the cigar in an ashtray that just popped into existence. The lights die with it, as this dogan fades away.

Because I'm the one who does the cutting.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland has no idea what the fuck Joe is talking about. He's the last gunslinger of Gilead, for the sake of all the gods -- whether or not they exist -- and there can't be any more. Because Gilead is no more.

He doesn't say anything more to Blondie, only brings himself out of the trance.

It's dusk, now, and the kerosene smell is stronger. The weight is heavier, too -- a pile of corpses. He hears voices, but they're far away, and so slowly he eases himself out. He's still got his guns.

And he opens his eyes -- slitted, first. When he's sure nobody is around, he opens them further, and eases himself out from under the giant's dead body. Covered in dirt and blood and muck, he crouches, and looks around him --

-- and there's the door.

He moves forward. It follows him.

And it keeps following him as he zig-zags his way up the hill.

He doesn't pass Cuthbert's body. Nor Alain's. He doesn't know how to feel about this.

And the cavemouth is in sight, and he keeps scrambling upward, when a sharp pain explodes just below his right shoulder blade.

Sniper.

Roland can't turn and shoot, so he darts behind a blue-black stoneface, and keeps climbing, slowly.

He enters the cave, finally, and he is breathing hard. You still in there?

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Right here. You're hurt. I'm gonna come forward a bit more an' help--I don't feel it like you do.

[lastgunslinger]

It hurts, yes. Like a motherfucker. His shirt is sticking to his back, though whether it's with his blood or someone else's he can't tell. No. Tell me what to do and I'll do it.

Right now giving up control is the last thing Roland wants to do.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe does it anyway, lending him strength and making the pain more distant. Nothing Roland can do about it. His eyes swirl, and keep on swirling, from identical eyes to identical eyes, halfway between.

Find the card. Put it somewhere where it'll be safe until you need it. Then... shit, remember to use it.

Joe is privately worried about the wound, and the sounds of people hunting outside the cave.

[lastgunslinger]

It's dark inside the cave, but Roland's eyes are good...when they're his.

He doesn't want to do this. Knows he has to. If Blondie wasn't taking some of the pain away he probably couldn't do it, but now he crawls around the floor, casting around for the card.

It takes a moment, but he finds it. It takes longer for him to struggle back to his feet. I'm putting it in my grow-bag.

And he moves back to the back of the cave, where his gunna is stored. He drops it in, cinches the bag shut, and puts the grow-bag in his pocket.