Gunslinger

Vash nodded at her, trying to ignore the beauty of her eyes (her face) when she smiled. He couldn't think of that. Not now. Perhaps not ever. "I can walk.' It would hurt to do it, but, hell, sitting there breathing would hurt, too. "I can run if we need to." Again, it would hurt, but he could do it. Mostly, he'd do it to help her. He wouldn't allow himself to be too weak to help her.

"With ancestors like that, you'll do fine, then. You're a desert flower, used to blooming in adversity." Yup. The charmer was back in place. Usually, he was much worse at it. ...He was really off his game right then...

Now you're the daughter of the Deliver...

Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Hardly."

She felt more choked by adversity than vibrant. Desert flower indeed.

She sat beside him and rested her head on his shoulder so they could still talk. It wasn't easy for her to be that close to him and she was now visibly shaking with the effort.

"Next they come in here it will be to kill me. I haven't given them what they want, and I wont. I was just trying to get inside their organization to stop them. I belong to a team like them--only we don't steal alien technology or torture aliens. They think you can help us against our worst enemy. If you can, there's a place for you with my team. Even if you can't, they'll help you. They helped me get away from...well, away from a bad place."

Sarah sighed to regulate her breathing.

"Whatever you have, or whatever you are--they are going to take it if they have to dissect you to get it."

She nudged closer, fearing the listeners as she was about to tell him her secret.

"I'm a spy. Where I come from I am the best at what I do. If by my life, or death, I can help you survive this--I will."

Vash carefully draped his arm around her to give the allusion that she was curling up against him for comfort.

All right. So a little bit of that reasoning was to give comfort.

...And okay, so there was even more of him that was doing it to put his arm around her, because, seriously, it had been years since he'd held a woman like that.

"They won't get you. I won't let them. They think I'm defenseless, other than the weapon they've tried to force me to unleash. I'm not. I won't let them take you. I'll get you back to your team. I've faced death before. I'm not afraid to do it again." He wasn't afraid of being dissected, not really. The only thing he was afraid of with that was them figuring out how to activate his arm, even if he were dead.

Sarah stiffened and sucked in a deep shaking breath when his arm wrapped around her.

This what not what she'd planned when she signed up for this mission.

"Are you telling me you've been armed this whole time and you let them do this to you?"

Maybe he was stupid. If she'd been armed in Iran things would have played out much differently.

"In the very least you could have used it on yourself instead of endure their torture."

She'd attempted to arm herself many times during her stint with VEVAK. Only in the beginning had she been strong enough to try and harm the men. After that it was a means of escape.

Eternal damnation was better than Iran--but hey, it wasn't like she was Catholic.

Vash shrugged, resisting the urge to move hair from her face. If she was shaking from his arm being around her, there was no telling what more personal contact could bring about. "I'm just stubborn, I guess. I wasn't going to use it on them, because why should I consider my life to be more important than theirs? As far as not using it on myself goes, I abhor that the most." That and, he wasn't entirely sure that he could even die.

He would hate to have given away the fact that he had more than one weapon in an attempt to kill himself that didn't even work. That just seemed like the height of wastefulness.

Sarah almost blew their cover with her tone of voice.

"Let me see...you innocent whatever you are who could probably do some good out there, versus those murderous, cutthroat, thieving, renegades--you think *they* are worth more than you?"

She felt her fists tighten.

"If I'd had half the chance you did I would have destroyed those bastards. They plant their bombs in our schools, blame us for defending ourselves, rape our..."

She swallowed the rest before she could dig herself too deep. She'd stopped talking about the rouge SG team.

"I mean they don't deserve your mercy. They mean to kill you and anyone who gets in their way. To let them do that is more than irresponsible--it's wrong."

Vash's brain stuck on "rape". It would explain the shaking, and...

He carefully moved his arm, putting it more behind her than around her. "By killing them, could I have guaranteed my freedom? Or would all that have happened been more bodies on my conscience, and I'd still be stuck here? Circumstances have changed, but it was just me before."

He was working hard to not point out the word he was stuck on. He didn't think she'd want to talk about it, or she would have done so already.

"If I killed everyone that wanted to kill me, I would have a couple hundred people's blood directly on my hands."

She relaxed a bit when he moved his arm.

"Only a couple?" She managed to give him a wink at that. He had a point, which was why she let the matter drop.

She stretched out her long legs with a sigh.

"We need a plan, Val. There isn't much time."

Vash nodded. "The plan is, when they come for you, we fight. You run. I keep up with you and fight. The main goal is to get you out." Vash smiled widely at her, ignoring the blood that began dripping from his mouth again. "Because, after all, desert rose, you must be protected." Yeah. He was well aware that roses had thorns. He was pretty sure that would make her mad at him.

Which was part of his goal. Less to get her mad at him, but more to get her mad in general.

Apparently, he didn't abhor suicidal tendencies. Just suicide itself.

Sarah wrenched out of his embrace.

"I am not a little girl. I can protect myself, todah-rega. I will fight with you."

It was starting to annoy her how little he thought about himself. Maybe this was how Elijah felt when he'd pried the gun from her fingers? Though this guy was too good for the easy way out.

What had she gotten into?

"If anyone is expendable it's me. I'm not even sure the yeneral expected me to come back from this mission. He sent me deep undercover, with no back-up and no way out. I don't even have a GDO to open the Iris for our Stargate--just an address to a planet I can go to in an emergency."

She expected the door to open any moment.

Vash managed to keep the smile to himself. He'd gotten her fighting mad. Good. "Sounds to me that your yeneral thought a lot of you. If he didn't give you those things, he must have thought you didn't need them." His legs tensed ad he prepared to launch himself at whomever came through the door.

Which should be happening any moment now, with the way they'd been talking.

Maybe talking freely hadn't been the best idea...

But it sure beat sitting around waiting for things to happen.

She couldn't help the snort.

"Maybe Adir...but I doubt yeneral Howards has any such opinion of me. I tend to be a pain in his ass on a good day."

Her ears were trained by many long sleepless nights to hear approaching footsteps.

Sarah moved to the side of the door and waited. She did not have to wait long.

Broken-nose slammed the door open. a split second later more than just his nose was broken. If she had to guess, his collarbone and trachea--but she was already onto his friend before he hit the ground.

Val was in no condition to fight.

Sarai reacted before Vash could - and he thought his reactions were good, but apparently he was woefully out of practice - but Vash was close on her heels. She'd taken care of the first guy through (the one that had pulled her up by the hair and had knocked Vash around like a ragdoll) by the time Vash got over there. It looked like she wanted to keep fighting, but Vash had other plans, that mostly consisted of "get out of there as quickly as possible", so he grabbed her hand and yanked her along.

He hadn't been allowed out of his cell for... well, he'd lost track of the amount of time, but he was pretty sure it was longer than weeks. But in spite of not having walked around the area, he had a more than decent idea of where they were supposed to be going.

Once they were out, though, he was more than willing to follow Sarai's lead, seeing as how she would have been through there more recently than he had.

Sarah followed after he practically tore her arm out of socket pulling her along. He hadn't looked that strong.

"The team is small. I only met five, though I'm not sure how many support staff or guards they have. This place isn't nearly as secure as SGC."

She yelled to him as they ran. The team might be small but they had lots of firepower.

A door caught her attention and she pulled Val this time.

"This way. We can hide in here for a moment and maybe find a weapon."

A single guard stood inside the door. She padded up behind him and looped her arms around his neck, squeezing his blood supply until he went limp and she let him drop to the floor.

She bent to reach for his gun.

Vash was breathing heavily when she pulled him into the room. His injuries were throbbing. But he could shove the pain down. He could hurt later. First and foremost was getting Sarai out of there. "Normally, I'd say something like 'Don't kill him'. Right now, all I can think to say is 'Shoot them all'." Vash sighed heavily before continuing. "Kill if you need to." He'd still do what he could to ensure the survival of the butterflies and the spiders, but if it came down to it, he'd save the butterflies every time and the spiders when he could. Sarai was the butterfly.

Sarah stowed the zat wishing for a real gun.

"Don't worry, this one only stuns people--unless they are shot twice--then they die. Oh, and three times disintegrates."

She sighed.

"Not my first choice of weapons."

Sarah stepped over the unconscious man and looked around the room. It was set up like an infirmary only colder. A single metal bed occupied the center of the room--the similarity to an autopsy table was not lost on Sarah.

A large red coat hung on the wall. Near the table was a work bench where a revolver of unknown caliber lay in pieces.

"Now this is more like it." She slid onto the bench and started assembling the weapon. It was easy enough although there seemed to be extra parts.

She spun a black cylinder between her fingers. She'd never seen a part like it before--sure this was an alien gun, but it looked like a normal colt, except for the extra parts.

"What the...?"

"I want a zappy gun..." Guns that stunned, rather than outright kill? That would have come in handy on his home world. But she seemed to be proficient with it, and understood it better than he did, so he wasn't going to take it away from her.

When Sarai started assembling the gun, Vash was more than a little impressed at the speed with which she put it together. When she spun the cylinder between her fingers, however, he cleared his throat nervously. "That would be mine. Please don't drop it." He swung his coat onto his shoulders. "Oh, hello, darling, I've missed you." He fastened the buttons quickly, fingers flying over them.

It might be a simple thing, but his coat was more home to him than any actual place.

Sarah almost gasped when she took her attention off the gun. He stood like a new man, clothed in red. He seemed almost dangerous--and attractive. For the first time she looked him over for more than just assessing his injuries.

Her cheeks took on the slightest hint of red.

"Yours huh? Nice weapon. This though--is it some kind of power cell? Is this a raygun?"

She held the cylinder up to the light. The longer she looked at it the more mysterious it became. If she looked very close she could almost detect a light inside it.

Vash tilted his head as he considered the best way to answer. "I suppose you can think of it as a necessary component to load the gun."

It wasn't a perfect analogy, but it would work. He spun back around, the tail of his coat flapping around his calves - oh, how he'd missed his coat, he hadn't been lying - and faced Sarai again. "Did you have any weapons when you were brought in? Anything we could get back for you?"

Sarah's nose scrunched up as she looked at the piece.

"Huh. Well, where does it go so we can get out of here?" There didn't seem a place for it on the assembly.

She couldn't help the way the bright red attracted her eyes.

"Anything I came with I can live without. I haven't been here long enough to settle in. They took my guns, knives, and other weapons--but those are all replaceable. Let's blow this joint while we can."

Vash held his hand out towards her expectantly. "It goes with me."

His head tilted again. "Blow this joint? If that means for us to get out of here, I think that's a plan I can get behind. It's a shame about your weapons." He looked at the door, listening for noises from the other side and hearing nothing. "May I have my gun, please? You have your zappy gun."

Sarah shrugged.

"Eh, my prize weapon is at home along with everything else I care about."

She eyed the gun and then him. I occurred to her that this was exactly what she would do if she were still playing him--she wasn't--but this was the best way to get him to trust her.

She pouted at her zat to keep from laughing at his term for it.

Zappy gun indeed.

Sarah handed him the gun and placed the cylinder in his other hand. His skin felt cold, not the warmth of the side she'd leaned on.

"Think you can keep up?"

Vash tucked the cylinder into his pocket with a nod. "I don't really have a choice do I? I'll keep up." He shoved the pain down. He could deal with it later.

Sarah nodded and headed for the entrance, zat at the ready.

The alarm had started while they were running from the cell and now her head pounded in sync with the klaxon.

"I came in just down that corridor. The Stargate is in there."

Three fell to her zat as they ran. Sarah kept her eyes on Val at all times. It wasn't hard with the brilliant red coat.

The Stargate was unguarded.

Sarah actually took Val's hand and led him to the DHD where he could rest a moment. She started to dial out to the address she'd memorized but when she hit the center chevron nothing happened.

"Charrah! Why isn't it working?!"

She slammed her fist down on the console near the Gate.

Windows opened on the Gate and she realized her mistake.

They weren't on a planet.

Vash shoved pain down and kept up with her, his coat flapping around his legs as his booted feet smacked against the floor underneath them. The high-pitched wail wasn't helping matters, but he forced himself to tune the sound out as much as possible. He didn't even have to shoot, as the men they came across fell to Sarai's zappy gun. His hope was rising as she hit the buttons or whatever would be the best way to describe them, but when nothing happened, the hope dashed itself.

And then the walls opened.

Vash pressed himself up against the glass, looking out at the stars. It hadn't occurred to him, even being told he was on another planet, that he'd see this view again.

"It's beautiful." His voice fell in awe, before he shook himself out of it. "What do we do now?"