(no subject)

[lastgunslinger]

As soon as he got up to his room he fell asleep, and there were nightmares, so he spent the night sitting in the bathroom with the lights on, reading Walt Whitman. When dawn came he fell into bed and slept hard.

Now, in the waning afternoon light, he takes stock of his surroundings. There are his chairs, and the end table. The books have been moved -- by him, he thinks; it's been many years (for him, anyway) and he can't remember all the details -- but other than that it's just the same. Not home -- he won't let himself think of it that way yet -- but it's his.

And he nods. It'll do.

Comments

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe nods. "You didn't pay enough attention in those classes."

[lastgunslinger]

A sour look. "And you would have?"

It was pretty boring.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe smirks. "Never hurts to be able to think around corners." He sets the glasses down on the end table and pours.

[lastgunslinger]

Bastard.

"You didn't have to sit there for hours a day." Pause. "You see the lessons with Cort, too?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Bit. Things can get a bit muddled together in there--chain of association." Joe hands him one glass and sips from the other.

[lastgunslinger]

"Say thankya." He stares down at the glass's contents for a moment, then looks up. "If you had," says Roland, "you'd understand why I preferred Cort's." Something very like a smile -- though not exactly.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Mm." Joe nods noncomittally. Truth be told, he wouldn't have cared for either, but less for Cort--structure and discipline imposed from outside have little appeal for him.

"Certain things were--well, you remember how I made the bar, to... make it easier to talk about? In the same way, there were things in lockboxes. I didn't take the dynamite to them or anything."

[lastgunslinger]

Roland looks at him. "I didn't know you made the bar." A pause. "It wasn't exactly like the bar." Another pause. "Kind of like a place in Mejis."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"So that's where the stag's head came from," Joe says thoughtfully. "I reckon you put up half. I just decided we needed a place to palaver face-to-face."

[lastgunslinger]

"Why?"

A curious look, as he sips his whiskey.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe raises an eyebrow. "Because a voice in the head ain't terribly convincing."

[lastgunslinger]

"I convinced Eddie."

Roland leaves the rest of the story out.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe nods thoughtfully. "So that's where you'd seen that kind of door before?"

Then he smirks. "Bet you wish now you'd thought of makin' a bar." It probably never occured to him. Roland's mind had been almost scary in its...starkness. Its brutal simplicity, determination, and lack of creativity.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland snorts. "Wasn't time to think of that. Pulled his ass out of the fire." A pause. "As he did mine."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe carefully makes no comparisons at all and sips his whiskey. "So is the younger one still running around?"

[lastgunslinger]

Roland shakes his head. "They sent him -- me -- out the door, after Will Stanton had me forget until I needed to." A pause. "That's how I was able to open the door."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe nods. "That was the plan." Well, the Will Stanton stuff wasn't his idea, but Joe likes a plan with some wiggle room built in. Anyway, it's easy to be smug once it works.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland raises an eyebrow. "You had one?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe looks very slightly shifty. "Not at first. Then I came up with one. I reckoned if you went and got the card and remembered the password and held on to it, you could open the door. Y'know, in thirty years. Then it went to shit because you got shot and fell through the door, but seems like it worked out in the end."

[lastgunslinger]

Roland nods, and sips his whiskey.

Only it's a pretty large sip, but whatever.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe does not deign to notice the size of Roland's sips. "Sure were a shitload of those things at the door. They usually as dense as all that?" The underlying question is, if so, how did you survive?

[lastgunslinger]

Roland shakes his head. "Didn't notice me much, the first while. Then -- scent of blood brings more." Staring at the glass in his hands, now, and speaking steadily. "Was getting low on bullets when the door opened."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"Well, it all worked out in the end," Joe repeats, his eyes flicking to the horn momentarily. He takes a drink.

[lastgunslinger]

"It did."

A pause.

A long pause.

"Mina all right?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"She ain't happy about it." Shortly.

"Tell you the truth, gunslinger--you scare me sometimes. You've got something... people believe in you. They want to help you. And then they die. We both yelled at Meg over that pistol, I reckon, but without it, that--that it would've bit her right in half." Joe shakes his head and drains his glass. "Mina reckons I've dodged enough bullets with your name on them. And I gotta say she might be right."

[lastgunslinger]

Roland is quiet for a long moment. Joe's right. He knows Joe's right -- that people who help him die. He's told Meg as much.

"I know," he says finally. "That's why I told you I wanted you out of Tower business."

Bombardier eyes focus on Joe.

"She's right."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe nods. "From here on out, I'm out. Be easier on me if you folks stay out of trouble."

He halts again, then speaks. "I had the dreams again, last night."

[lastgunslinger]

"We'll try. Trouble usually finds us."

A sip of whiskey, and now a closer look. "I'd hear more."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"First one--damned thing. Reckon I was dreaming I was Tuco, hunting me down after I left him in the desert. Anyway, it came out the same way, finally-- found an inn and my horse was outside, so I climbed up to the window and there I was."

"Then it turned over into the other dream. I wandered around and I found that fence again, and then, well," Joe shrugs. "I jes' turned around and went the other way."

[lastgunslinger]

Roland is silent for a moment.

"With the second one -- you didn't hear any singing?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe shrugs. "Takes a little bit more than a pretty choir to draw me on, after all I've seen. No Tower, no God, no war. That's my stand, an' I aim to hold it." He shoves his hands in his jeans pockets, awkward with the sincerity.

[lastgunslinger]

"What was behind that fence -- " Roland stops, and looks at Joe with some wonder.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe shrugs.

[lastgunslinger]

Still with wonder: "It's the Tower."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"It was a dream, Roland," Joe says gently. "Only that and nothing more. Dreaming's done. I am who I am, and you are who you are, and whatever Stephen fuckin' King may say, that's all we are. Give you the joy of your Tower, but you can fuckin' keep it."

[lastgunslinger]

Roland looks at Joe now, wonder still on his face -- and then it is changed for solemnity, and he nods.

No gunslinger, Joe Manco.

But that's all right.