Gally's stability had proven to be somewhat volatile. At times, he gazed at her with an utmost clarity, and knew better than to ask too many questions at the time. Knew he should go to sleep. Knew that he needed to rest, because they'd get moving soon.

Ramona found though that very quickly things could change. A shift in the cart, a nightmare in the brief moments he had his eyes closed, and everything was different. Terror gripped his heart, and he thought he was somewhere completely different.

She didn't think it was something like insanity, rather just complete unfamiliarity. This was all so new. As he'd told her over and over, he'd dreamed of it a thousand times and was sure he was going to "wake up". That was what his major complaint was about, that he was going to wake up and be somewhere new. Like he didn't know the difference between what he saw in his sleep and what he saw awake anymore.

"Sometimes..." he sort of drifted. It was the third time he'd done this. Ramona wished he would stop.

Ramona did not bother to indulge him any more. If he wanted to continue speaking, his brain would rack it until his words eventually came out of his mouth. Instead, she took a mental inventory. Bullets were going to become a problem, but she still had one more sleeve of them. All of her weapons, plus a knife. Only one shirt, which was the one she was wearing. A crown. Money, only spent some on her and Leif's meals, so she had most of what she left with.

Looking at Gally, she realized that the amount of money she had was no longer going to be a hidden wealth but suddenly a drain. He needed food, and a lot of it. Needed actual clothes that fit him, and didn't look like she threw him in old dumpster gowns and then pushed him around in a chair. Gally likely needed a check by an actual doctor who wasn't trying to kill him so she didn't end up dragging around a corpse.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she took a deep breath. Taking care of someone was something she hadn't done in a long time. She barely could take care of herself. If she went a day without eating, it'd be fine. If he went a day without eating, it might be normal, but it wouldn't help his case. They'd need regular meals. They'd need regular rests, at actual rest-stops. No forest logs and bonfires, not until Gally got a bit better off.

"What are you thinking about?"

Ramona snapped to his attention, and he was staring at her with a pinched but amused expression. He pointed to her hands. "You're counting."

"I'm counting my inventory."

"Oh?" He shifted and twiddled his thumbs. "Can I help?"

She scoffed. "No." She didn't need him to know what money she had. In fact, the less he knew of her operations, the better.

"What's the next step?"

Taking a deep breath, she tried to rifle through the options. First, they likely needed food. Ramona wouldn't mind a bed, and in that time for getting a bed, it'd be great if they could find a doctor who would actually treat him. It'd be great if they found a doctor who didn't recognize him.

That was something she hadn't thought about. Was anyone going to recognize him? She'd seen pictures of him when he was much younger, and admittedly he didn't resemble those much anymore, but if anyone knew him personally they might be able to see him behind the drug-inflicted deathly veneer.

"Do you have a next step?"

"I'm thinking we get you some food," she said. "Then find a place to sleep that isn't the back of a carrier van and some hay."

He laughed.

"Next day, I find a job that can earn us a little money and maybe make us a few friends to get us to the next place. We find you a doctor's appointment —"

"Absolutely not."

She blinked at him. "These won't be like the docs you've just gotten away from."

"You don't know that."

"I'll kill them if they try anything funny."

"That..." he had to think, and clutched at his baggy tattered shirt. "That really doesn't make me feel better."

"Gally," she flew herself forward so she was close to his face. "Do I strike you as a caregiver?"

His gaze surveyed her and he sort of shrugged. "Not particulraly, no."

"Do I look like I have a - um- a medical understanding?"

"No, but you don't need to."

She scoffed at that and pushed away from him. "Gally." She stood up and walked their little back clearing. It was maybe two meters long. "Don't be stupid. I need to figure out how to get you back and working order."

"To do what?" he asked.

She scrunched her face up and gave him a blank look. "So you can, I don't know, live your life?"

"But that's not what you do," he said. "You take jobs, like bounty hunter jobs, or thieving, or whatever. You shoot people. Like you said, you're not a caregiver. What difference is it to you that I eventually get back on my feet or not?"

That took her by surprise. It wasn't as though his assessment was wrong, by any means, but she figured her actions spoke more than that. Or perhaps there was nothing that could clear her anymore, not even abandoning a job to do what, she thought, was the right thing.

But who the fuck was he to assume such things? After she just risked her life, pissed off an organized business that had wealthy-as-shit operators, and got his ass out of a fucking drug den.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

The royal didn't even move, just stared unblinking. It wasn't until the howling of the wind outside got loud did his attention seem to swing back, needing all his focus to remain sturdy while the cabin rattled. He continued fussing over his position, his sitting position to answer. She stomped over and kicked a boot against the wall next to his face. He jolted upright.

"Answer my question."

"You're getting aggressive."

"Good job! You can understand basic body language." She leaned down, almost toppling as a gust of wind howled into the slats of their car. "Now let me tell you something. I do what I want, when and where I want to. If I decide to help you, you thank your fucking lucky stars because people I help come few and far between.  I don't make many promises, but I keep my fucking word. So, fuckwit, to say to me something as stupid as what you just said pisses me off. Because I may have acted impulsively, but it wasn't completely thoughtless."

He just sort of surveyed her, and flinched when the wind roared and she reared even closer to him. Then he sort of zoned out, eyes glazing over. Attention diverting,  she put her foot down and squatted in front of him and then clapped several times. "Gally!" she shouted at him. 

He jumped and started nervously laughing. "I just don't understand."

"What is there to understand!?"

"Well, no one cares about me anymore, and I have nothing to offer."

She was breathing aggressively, haggard and harsh, trying to inhale faster than the wind could take her breath away. "And what does that mean?"

"Well, my family is dead."

The conversation suddenly stopped in its tracks, and Ramona stopped breathing at all. The wind roared over the top of them, and Gally's mouth started moving but she didn't think he was saying anything in particular.

There was no question in it. It took her a minute to figure out that his expression had sort of cracked. It wasn't just that he had lost his head and kept zoning out this time, there was something a bit shattered in his expression.

Eventually she puffed out a breath. "Okay..."

He looked away from her, out the opening behind her, above the haystacks. "I deferred the crown, so I have no right to it. Which means that it's the Banners." He looked back and jumped as the wind gusted through again. This time, he just let it pass through him, even though she could see he was shaking.

"The bounty was likely to prove that I was dead, yes?"

Ramona felt a dryness in her throat at that. She remembered when she wished he was so it'd save her the trouble. She bit her lip and nodded. "Yeah, I think that was the, um, master plan."

"That's what I figured." He shrugged. "So either they find me and they kill me, or..." He sort of wavered back and forth and then he looked up at her. "Ramona, how long have I been gone?"

Ramona moved from her squatting position to sit down fully now, and leaned her head against the metal cage of the car. "Is this really a conversation you want to have now?"

He smiled, softly. "It's the same conversation I've been having with myself for a while, but now I might have some answers."

There was a distinct lucidity about him now, a sharpness she didn't know he possessed. Ramona figured she'd be working with a lunatic, or even worse, someone so checked out that they were clueless and apathetic to trying to help their own situation. His confusion, however, did not seem to derive from that. His confusion derived out of looking like there was no options.

He had yet to learn that sometimes you have to make your own options. She figured it out. She may not like who she was, but it was better than feeling like there was no way out.

"You've been gone six years."

Six years seemed to wash over him, as his shoulders sort of sagged, and his head sort of lulled. Then he laughed, and it wasn't like his nervous laughs with no breath to them, it actually shook him, but it shook him in sort of a miserable way, the laughter blue and bleak. "That's odd, because I feel somuch older. But at the same time I feel like I should be able to, you know, re-enter my life as it was."

"Yeah." You get over that, she almost said.

"So, six years, which means I'll be declared dead in a year," he said. Then his gaze zeroed on her. "So, when I say that I don't understand your plan, I just don't understand why you did what you did."

"That's still not clear to me."

"I'm not worth anything."

"Oh, yikes, Gally." She shook her head and sighed. "It wasn't about what you were worth."

That seemed to confuse him, and he teetered back and forth. They let the wind bring a hush to the area, roaring in their little cart, pieces of hay being blown out of the back and out into the air. The world around them was plain, level, flat, and cold.

Gally began to shiver like none other, and she got up and put the coat back over him. He nodded. "So you were serious."

"I'm rarely not. Over the years, my humor has become more black than unrealistic."

"But you actually got me out because you thought it was disgusting."

"Yes." She brazened herself, tried to think through her words carefully. "Look, I'm not the gal to tell you about the worthiness of humanity and their goodness, because I think that's bullshit. People in my experience are absolute monsters who are greed-driven and bitter-infested and out for themselves. But." Ramona rapped the metal cage to keep his attention as it seemed to be wavering, distracted by the changing winds. "They're usually not that horrible. Most people, they don't go to such lengths. Because people tend to also be lazy."

He snorted.

She smiled at it. "It's the truth. That operation took way too much effort for the normal person. Also, normal people, they can't stomach that crap. At least I can't." When she looked at his arms she wanted to kill something. They were wrecked, bloody, bruised. Part of her wanted to wipe them off, but they also looked sensitive in their ruin. "I mean, Gally, it hurts to look at you."

"Is it really that bad?"

"I'd get you a mirror, but I think life's bad enough for you right now."

"That's mean," he said. At least he looked amused. 

Ramona laughed. "Like I said, black humor."

"Yeah, you don't pull any punches."

"Oh, you should expect that. If I throw a punch, I intend for it to land." Then she reached behind her and grabbed his crown, hoping to change the subject, and perhaps, lighten the mood a little. "Do you recognize this?" 

His expression changed, and whatever humor they had brought into the situation had died almost immediately. So much for that. "Yes. I saw you carrying it." 

She extended it to him. "It was yours." 

"I'm aware." He looked away. "Throw it away."

"Throw it away?" she asked. "It's a crown. You don't throw away a crown." 

"Who in here is royalty?" he asked. 

Ramona blinked at him and kind of stuttered, wanting to be angry all over again. She didn't lug this all over just for him to deign it useless, and Leif certainly put a lot of effort into keeping it as well. Even she could see the sentimentality, the effort, the personal touches that had been put into it. 

"It was meant specifically to protect you."

"Made out of superstition and bad medicine." 

She rolled her eyes at that. "Bad medicine, what in the world do you mean? It's symbolic, don't you have any appreciation for that?" 

They both halted at her saying that. Ramona hadn't said anything like that for a long time. Gally was bringing out the most annoying aspects of her former self.  

Gally almost asked a question, but Ramona interjected to appeal to monetary aspects.  "Nevermind that -- Gally, this is worth tons.  This is priceless. People have killed for this." She decided not to mention that she was one of them.

He looked at it -- no, he glared at it -- and said only one thing: "when something's value goes beyond number, it has no number at all." He sighed, almost cringing when he glanced at it. Attention flickered to her, then to the movement out the window. "Sell it, melt it down, throw it into the ocean; I don't care. It's worthless." 

And with that, the conversation screeched to a halt.