#and the bounty on Boothill's head makes for such tasty opportunities ♡

[feroluce]

Boothill draws his gun. Shoots.

Another body drops, adds to the pile. Black armor, orange visor, red tie. Dan Heng feels like he's been watching him do this forever, from this strange impossible angle where his eyes swing and veer like a camera on a track between blinks.

The corpses fall atop each other, become indistinguishable. Black, streaked through with orange and red. Boothill draws his gun, shoots.

Black, orange, red.

The pile grows.

Dan Heng feels himself smear across the air, lines blurring and edges bleary, vision like a cataract. There is black as far as he can see, Boothill’s fans whirring and churning as far as he can hear. His syrupy, soggy brain tells him he smells gunpowder, metal, steam. Boothill's voice is strangely silent between his sharp steely teeth.

The pile surrounds.

It mixes, melds, roils, a rush-in like a crashing wave catching Boothill in its current. It sticks to him, black-on-black, tangles in his spurs and claws its way up his legs even as he kicks at it. Tendrils of it twine upward, around the holster of his useless revolver, between the brass-knuckle joints of his hands. Boothill is pulled down, pulled forward, fighting to resurface and keep his head above. The thickness of it is enough to suffocate.

The gallows awaits them.

Boothill is hauled to it, kicking, thrashing, clawing, silent-screaming, never one to go down easily. The mass of black-orange-red crests, swells, the tide of it ties tight around his neck like a noose, Boothill is dragged up, up, up, forced onto tiptoe, struggling to stay aground until he's hanging, struggling to draw air with every harsh and strangled breath-

Dan Heng jolts awake, flails, eyes unseeing as he desperately claws at his turtleneck until a finger catches the edge just right and pulls one zipper down. His chest is heaving.

Metallic boots swinging freely haunt his vision until the ceiling of the archives comes into view, lit floor painting it soothing blue. Dan Heng watches the waves until his heart stops its staccato, until his lungs ease their violent fluttering.

He rolls over onto his left side as soon as he can stomach the motion, unlocking his phone and scrolling up the chat already on the screen to his last received message.

Three months.

It's been three months since the sudden violent death of Oswaldo Schneider. Three months since Boothill's bounty nearly doubled, went from wanted alive posted in Pier Point and along all major trade routes, to wanted dead or alive on every single planet the IPC can flaunt their power over.

Three months since a voice message, “I have somethin’ I wanna tell ya…not like this, though. Face-to-face. I wanna do it right,” followed by several seconds of silence that sound like a war.

“…I hope I'll find ya again when this all blows over.”

Dan Heng switches apps, pulls up the IPC's real-time most wanted list. Boothill's information sits at the top. Still at large.

Still not captured. Still alive.

Dan Heng fixes his turtleneck, situates his quilt over his shoulders and pulls it up to his ears. Listens to the whirring white noise of the archive and all of its equipment.

He doesn't take his eyes off the screen as he quietly waits for sleep to reclaim him.