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Caught Halfway by Ashlucard713

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Chapter 3

The suns were sinking low on the horizon as the Prok Dunes passed beneath them. Daelu had long ago eaten their dust, but Tien hadn’t said anything since they had left the city limits. Knives cast a glance to his right. Her face hadn’t changed. Her eyes still had that far-off meditative look, as though she’d retreated into herself. Keeping his eyes glued to the desert, he extended mental fingers to her, trying to probe her mind. He had barely touched the surface when her eyes snapped out of their trance and locked onto his face. With brutal force, she slammed the fingers back into his mind.

I told you to STAY OUTTA MY HEAD!

His brain throbbed from the telepathic punch. “What’s wrong?”

“Hmm, ‘what’s wrong?’ Gee. It couldn’t possibly be that I’ve been told I’m a freak of nature, I saw six men brutally killed right before my eyes, and all of Daelu thinks I did it.” She sighed. “At least they’ll only find one body.”

“Two.”

“What?”

“Two bodies. The clerk in the store.”

“Davie?” Her thin face pulled taut with shock, then anger. “You killed Davie! What kind of man are you?”

“I am not exactly a man, am I?”

“Whatever. I didn’t ask you to kill them.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I never wanted them dead!”

“Then what did you want?” he barked, his temper finally rising. “Them to rape you again?”

No response. He glanced at her and cringed. He could have stabbed her, shot her, and disemboweled her, but her expression couldn’t have been worse. All the blood had drained from her starved face and her cheeks were pinched tight with emotion. Her eyes turned to liquid, and the brilliant blue faded to nothing as grief clouded over. Dirt-coated hair whipped across her skeletal features, only adding to her unattempted look of forlorn hopelessness. She finally turned away and glued her eyes to her bare feet, but he saw a small tear streak down her dust-covered face.

He bit the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste blood. Damn this stupid desert! Easing his foot off the accelerator, he started to fumble with the buttons, trying to find a way to put up the top. Tien grunted and hit a button beside the satellite receiver and the top started to unfold.

“Slow down to thirty, or else the wind’ll rip the top off,” she stated blandly.

He slowed, and once the top latched onto the windshield, he pushed the gas again. “Where’s the nearest town?”

“Fine time to ask that. A hundred iles out of nowhere.”

“Tien—”

“We won’t make it tonight. Keep west.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At ten o’clock they stopped. The temperature had dropped sharply once the suns set, and the sky had clouded over, shutting out the moonlight. Knives had found a portable stove in the trunk, but their supper was barely warm enough to merit digestion. He and Tien sat against the car, both pairs of eyes fixed on the stove’s tiny flame as it heated a pot of coffee.

Nothing stirred over the desert. No wind, no animals, nothing. The deathly silence was unbearable. Knives glanced at Tien. She leaned against the rear wheel, legs pulled up to her chest, chin resting on scrawny knees, a brown blanket tightly wrapped around her.

His gaze returned to the stove. “Earlier—”

“You had a point,” she replied, her voice throaty. “If you hadn’t…then they…” A deep breath, and she could speak. “I wouldn’t have been the last.”

“You should get some sleep.”

Her eyes turned to him. “What about bandits?”

“I’ll stay awake.”

A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Okay.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The suns beat down on his roughened face, burning through his lids straight into his retinas. Knives groaned and tried to move his forearm over his eyes. Something resisted, and he cracked open an eyelid to find his body tangled in a mess of blankets. He’d only used the green one, so why was brown also in his vision? Blinking his mind awake, he looked around and spotted Tien sitting atop a nearby dune. Her meager form was silhouetted against the pinkling sky, the wind whipping at her untangled hair. He sat up, peeling his aching limbs from their fabric bondages. She saw him stir and came over.

“So much for staying awake,” she smiled, plopping to the ground across from him. As she dug through his bag, he saw no trace of the dirt and grime that had stained her skin the previous night. The remnants of her street life had been washed off in the early morning.

“I see you opened the trunk.”

“Hmm, ‘raided’ is more like it. Donut?” she said, offering him a circular cake.

He eyed it strangely. “Where did you find that?”

“A box was stuffed in the bottom of your bag.” She snatched up another pastry and took a bite. “Marked ‘Emergency Food Rations.’ The expiry date was close, so I figured we’d better use them up.”

Knives sighed as he took the food. Vash.

“Who’s that?” she mumbled, her mouth full.

“My brother.”

“Brother?”

“An idiot and a buffoon. You will meet him soon enough.”

“Ahh.” She swallowed. “By the way, the two tanks of water in the trunk—”

“For the radiator.”

“I used some to clean up.”

“How much?”

“Third of a tank.”

“Mm,” he murmured, taking another donut. How she could clean so well with so little water, he didn’t understand. She said something, and he looked up.

“Hm?”

“I asked about your wounds.”

“Feh. They’re fine.”

“If they’re so ‘fine,’ I should take a look at them.”

He stiffened slightly. “That is not necessary.”

Her face warmed to sarcasm. “Uh-huh. That attitude is gonna land you one nasty infection, mister.”

“Hmph,” he snorted. “I have managed perfectly well without you.”

“Yeah, you’ve managed so well that your wounds won’t stop bleeding.”

He snorted again.

Tien crossed her arms melodramatically and looked him square in the face. “Take the shirt off,” she ordered slowly.

He returned her stare. “No.”

She ran her tongue along her teeth in aggravation. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

No.

Her arms unfolded as she shrugged. “Okay. Hard way it is then.” In a quick fluid motion, she reached behind her for the water tank, flipped the lid and sent half its contents flying at him.

Before he could react, the water completely doused him, its intense cold knocking the breath from his lungs.

“Now you have no choice,” she smirked.

Knives glared at her in anger and astonishment. No one should be able to defy him like that. However, she had used her abilities to chill the water—he had sorely underestimated her. He acquiesced, and began to grumpily unbutton his shirt.

Tossing the sodden garment aside, he turned his back to her. “Just hurry up,” he grumbled as she rose to her feet.

Another freezing deluge hit him and he whipped his head up. A mischievous grin stretched across Tien’s visage as she lowered the emptied tank.

“Dammit, woman! What more do you want?!”

“You needed a shower,” she stated, dropping a towel in his lap. He growled through a set jaw, and began to dry his shivering body. Grabbing the dressings and the medkit from the trunk, she noticed a glass bottle hiding in the back seat of the car. “Whiskey. Perfect!”

“For what?” he mumbled through the towel.

“You’ll find out,” the girl smiled. She dropped to her heels behind his back and began carefully mixing ingredients into a small bowl. Knives glanced over his shoulder and saw her spitting into the bowl.

What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Just mixing some medicine,” she replied, stirring the contents with her fingers. As she crawled to his right side, his nose wrinkled at the bowl. “Hey, don’t gimme that look. This stuff works better than anything you can buy.”

“It certainly doesn’t smell it.”

“The more it stinks, the better it works.” She set it on the ground and pulled out a scissors to cut through his old bandages. His eyes were still wary of the pasty concoction, and as she snipped, she explained, “It’s something I learned from Old Doc Sanderson. Every now and then some guy would wander into town, his belly full of lead, his guts hanging out, and all Old Doc did was pull out the shrapnel, slap this stuff over the wound, throw on a bandage and send him on his way.”

“And it healed him,” he replied skeptically.

“Grit your teeth.” Before he was ready, she yanked the dressing from his wound. Streaks of fire shot through his flesh, culminating a sharp yelp of pain.

“Oh man-up. It’s not like I’m pulling chest hairs,” she barked as he flinched away.

“Actually you are.”

Baby.

He narrowed his eyes. I heard that.

Then quit whining, she thought, gently fingering the wound. It was angry and red, burning under her touch. “Well, congratulations Knives. You have yourself a full-blown infection.”

From the corner of his vision, he saw her reach for the whiskey. “What are you—Aaagh!”

She was pouring the cool liquor over his wound, her gaze riveted on the fiery sore under the golden stream. “The alcohol works as a disinfectant.” Setting the bottle aside, she proceeded to slather the noxious-smelling paste into his injury.

“What is in that?”

“Oh, a little bit of this, little bit of that…”

“Little bit of saliva.”

“Makes it stick,” she grinned, slapping on another layer before beginning to dress the wound. “But try not to think about that. Think about something else. Distract your mind, and you won’t feel the pain. There,” she said, tucking in the free end of the binding. “One down, two to go.” She moved to his other shoulder and started cutting again.

“Tell me about your mother.”

The scissors stopped. “I meant you distract your mind.”

“Listening is a better distraction.”

She made the final snip and exhaled coldly as she ripped the bandage from his shoulder. This time he barely winced. “There’s not much to tell. She gave birth to me, but that was about as far her ‘motherly duties’ went. Once I could walk, she cut me loose. Never showed the slightest interest in me.”

“What of your father?”

“Hmph. Never met ‘im. He was just some guy who drifted into town looking for a fun night.”

“What if you did meet him?”

She vocally shrugged as she wrapped his shoulder tightly. “Don’t know. Don’t care. The guy was never in my life, so why should I spare a thought for him?” Tien shifted her attention to his stomach. “Why the sudden inquisition? You don’t seem the type.”

“You’re a plant.”

“Like that’s supposed to mean something? So I’m a plant. Big deal.”

“It is a ‘big deal’—”

“Oh yeah. I can live in a lightbulb! I can power a person’s house!” She snorted, wrenching the dressing loose savagely. “Now, instead of being a ‘freak,’ I’m a plant. It’s just a different label for the same thing.”

He whipped around and seized her eyes with his glare. Fierce anger rippled through his ocular pools, the pupils nearly disappearing under waves of rage. Hints of madness touched the lines of his face, and his voice was low and gruff. “You have no idea what you are, what you can do. The humans beat you down and made you cower before them, brainwashing you into slavery. They tortured you because they feared you. You are not human, Tien. Stop thinking like them. You’re a superior being.”

She held his gaze, her face unreadable. Bit of a superiority complex, haven’t we?

His eyes narrowed. I can teach you to use your powers.

I bet you can.

Why do you mock me?

Call it ‘healthy skepticism.’

You have no idea what I can do.

Yeah, I do.


His brow twitched minutely.

You can take care of your own dang wounds. She chucked clean bandages at him. I’m gonna pack.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Less than an hour later, they were flying through the desert again. The suns sat high in the warm blue sky, and the blasting winds had calmed to let the plants pass unheeded. Solid rock sped under the tires at over 70 iles an hour, and the Dunes flew past in a sandy blur.

“I get the feeling you’ve done this before,” remarked Tien.

“Hm?”

“You’ve been through the Prok Dunes, haven’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

She sighed and resettled her gaze on the horizon. “Two travelers wandered into town a while back. They said they’d been through the Dunes, but no one believed them. Few were even willing to listen to them. Late at night, they’d tell spin these unbelievable yarns about giant sandworms, strange Amazonian women, and lost technology buried out here. ‘Course, I read right through them, but one thing seemed to register as real. They told me they found an ancient road cutting through longest, most difficult stretch of the Dunes. If you found that road, the desert just seemed to float past.” Her eyes drifted back to him.

“There is no road here. We are merely traveling on a vein of rock blown clean by the wind.”

“Whatever you say, plant boy,” she remarked, turning back to the flying scenery.

He sighed. Her endless sarcasm was growing intolerable.

“Knives?”

“Hm.”

A question sat on the edge of her tongue, but she asked another. “If you’ve traveled the Dunes before, why did you ask me about the nearest town?”

“I had to get you to say something.

“Oh.”

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. Even without the link between them, he could feel the questions rising within her, questions needing to be asked. Questions he would soon be forced to answer.


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