Goon delivered the gauze as requested, having found it like it was a prize and then that sense of helplessness drove the big man outside. The Smart nurse lady wasn’t talking to him, she wasn’t talking to anyone and he couldn’t get her attention. Greg kept yelling at him to help him move the patient but the bleeding man didn’t interest Goon when Ash wouldn’t respond to him
On his way out of the building, he walked past a woman with black hair that flowed in tendrils around her face, loose from her braid. Goon looked at her sadly and continued on to sit at a section of the curb that wasn't yet crumbling.
The girl had hesitated in the doorway, an faint expression of awe at the functioning hospital in the midst of all the ruin on Sabatt. Something drew her away from the commotion inside to the sight of the lonely, big man outside.
"Hey ... Big man, I think they're calling you." She said, gesturing toward the building where Greg's echoes of "Goon, get back here!" had died. She furrowed her brow as he stared blankly off into the distance, then tilted his head left, then right; his expression thoughtful.
"You all right there?"
Goon blink-blinked, looked at Kirava, then back out to the half-annihilated city. He leaned left and leaned right. "Goon OK," he said.
"You don't seem it."
"Where lot loud thing? Goon always hear lot soon after lot hurt person come." Goon looked up, left and all around for something he seemed to be expecting to hear.
The woman was baffled. "Lot loud?" She echoed.
Goon nodded. "Lot, lot loud. Mean lot big fight, going be lot hurt people for try make fix."
She frowned, glancing around. "You've got me, buddy," she told him, not understanding what he meant yet.
"Nice talk lady lot hurt?" He blinked at her, but he didn’t see major injuries, only multiple bruises dotting her skin.
"Hmm? Me hurt? Nah." She smiled down toward him, though from where she stood it was more like smiling "across" at him.
He grinned, an expression usually predominant on the big man’s face. "Oh." His head bobbed in a nodding motion. "No be hurt lot good. Lot, lot people lot, lot hurt, lot die. Goon no like see."
She shook her head. "No, a lot of dead people would stink up the place." She grinned playfully.
This seemed to surprise the big man. "Lot dead people make stink?" It was something he’d never considered before.
The woman widened her grin. "Well, yea. The dead would eventually begin to rot, no?"
A look of wonder crossed his face. "Goon not know. Lot dead people ‘round, tell Goon dig hole for put in."
"Ah… Gravedigger, huh?"
"What gravedigger?"
"You."
"Goon gravedigger person?"
"The dead are buried in graves. The person digging the graves would be a grave-digger," she said patiently.
Goon spent a moment or two thinking about that. He nodded. "Lot smart fix people say Goon lot lot help person. Say Goon good person carry person."
She chuckled. "I'd imagine..." She smiled at him and held out a hand. "I’m Kirava."
Goon wasn’t sure what was funny, but he grinned anyway. He looked at the hand she offered to him and took it in his own. He shook it lightly, or so he thought, but even that light shake was far too strong a grip for most. The one named Kirava felt it as most would. "Goon… Goon!"
"Gaa..." she said, carefully and slowly pulling her hand back to herself. She sat on the curb beside him to cover the way she cradled her "well shaken" hand in her other hand, wondering if perhaps it were damaged because it felt a bit numb. "Nice to meet you, Goon." Kirava shook her hand out a little, mumbling, then let it fall back to her lap, satisfied that it wasn’t broken.
He grinned, scratched his head and nodded vigorously. "Lot odd. Goon no remember see only one lot hurt person."
"Its good though... no? Less work for you?"
"Goon lot happy no see lot hurt people. Fight bad. Lot, lot, lot people do make dead fight, no fix bad thing in place."
She nodded thoughtfully in agreement. "Fighting’s bad, yes." She leaned forward and picked up a small pebble to fiddle around with it, giving her hands something to do.
Sad at the discussion, Goon hung his head. "Goon not know why lot people think fight good thing. Make dead lot bad."
Kirava didn’t betray surprise as she looked over at Goon from inspection of her pebble. She shrugged as if that were some explanation. "'Lot of people are stupid."
Goon bobbed his head in nodded accord. He shuffled back to his feet and kicked up a great deal of dust with his large feet in the process. Perhaps it had occurred to him to do something. Kirava let out a soft sigh and flicked the pebble from her hands. There were pebbles everywhere on this scorched and abused world of Sabatt. They were the ground down remnants of the rubble of a war long over, only trouble was, no one still fighting it seemed to know that. She glanced up at the simple-seeming big man. If only everyone had his philosophy. Dying was bad. War was bad. Smart man, really.
She watched him look left and then right, expecting something again. Then a grin split his face at the general quiet from the lack of gunfire and the absent screams of wounded. He sat back down. Kirava smirked, brushed some dirt off her arm from what he had stirred up and hefted a larger pebble. She took Goon’s hand in hers, which made him blink-blink in curiosity. She lay his fingers out flat then placed the pebble in it. "There you go," she said, half expectantly, but immediately went back to constructing a small pile of suitable throwing stones. .
Goon grinned at the girl and pulled his arm back. The fling was mighty but the trajectory of his arm snapped the pebbled, POOF, right into the ground in front of him. He blinked, slumped his shoulders and announced, "Goon need more big rock thing for throw." That said, he turned to her and asked, "Whyfor nice talk lady come make fix place if not lot, lot hurt?"
Kirava offered a silent shrug and went back to digging through the little pebbles. "Bored maybe."
"Goon like for be lot bored." He nodded as if being bored meant that there was no hospital work to do, so it was a good thing to be bored rather than burdened with the digging of graves. She couldn’t help but to nod along with that thought. She continued sifting through her pebbles all the while and when she found a worthy one, and had inspected it with great care, she would then toss it moments later.
Goon watched her toss the stones with interest... an awful lot of interest for stone tossing, in fact. It may have been a revelation, as if the gods had created stones just for this purpose. He reached down to pick up a pebble but only kept dropping it. His big fingers didn’t permit him to grip it well. He looked around the empty, dusty street, searching for what suited him. Slipping off the curb, he crawled over to a baseball-sized stone.
"Hmm," Kirava urged. "Try that."
Hefting it easily, he crawled back over and flopped next to her on the remaining, crumbling curb. He cocked his arm back again. FLING! The rock went straight and HARD. It sailed thirty yards and smashed through a piece of battered useless building.
Her jaw dropped and Kirava blink-blinked.
"Goon good do throw!" He crowed triumphantly. But the girl wiped her hand off on her pant leg, then went back to the pebbles. He squinted at the hole he made, disappointed with her lack of enthusiasm, he slumped back again, happy to be bored.
Bored in a different fashion, Kirava looked up and over to the building as an explosion of sound, much like a single gunshot, rang out from inside. Goon blinked, startled as Kirava jumped to her feet. "What the hell?" Her hand fell automatically to her hip and rested on the handle of her dagger.
"No do fight," Goon told her, looking sadly at her and at her hand on the dagger. He pointed and she could have felt accused for a moment. But he was too simple hearted to think too terribly of her.
She glanced down, as if she hadn’t realized she’d reached for her weapon. "Ah... Sorry... reflexes." His nod was answer enough. She made sure there was no one approaching them and let her hand fall limply to her side. She looked down at Goon who grinned up at her. The urgency the sound of the shot had flooded her with dissipated. She smirked and shook her head, perhaps a bit surprised. "Okay, so. How did you become so... huge?"
Goon looked down at himself yet again. "Goon not know."
"You were just always like that, huh?" She glanced up as a young man moved outside from the hospital. He offered no explanation for what had happened inside, but he wasn’t running, so Kirava took that as a good sign. Maybe it had been an accidental discharge of a weapon, who knew? Who cared?
Meanwhile, Goon had pulled his beat-up white helper coat open to show a tattered military uniform of some kind. A few medals flashed in the muted light partially hidden under the coat. "Goon hear lot smart fix nurse people say Goon part big, big, big fight thing make place lot, lot not good place for live... Goon not know..." He closed his coat again. "Lot smart fix nurse people say no can show lot, lot people, maybe get lot mad at Goon."
"Why is that, Goon?"
He shrugged to her. "Goon not know"
"Goon...? Is that your name?"
Goon looked up at Ed Archer, from where he sat. He bobbed his head in a nod and grinned. "Goon, Goon!"
"Goon... were you a soldier?"
Kirava shifted her gaze to the new-comer to her private, peaceful chat. Talk of soldiers disturbed her, especially if one of the techs inside the hospital had told Goon to be careful of who he let see his uniform. She looked back to Goon, who said, "Goon not know." Hmmm, she thought.
"Hmmm," The other man said as well.
"And you would be?" Kirava liked Goon. He was a nice guy with a rotten job and she didn’t know this other guy at all.
"I'm me. Who are you?"
She raised a brow that told Ed without his name, he wasn’t getting hers. "Think your funny?"
He shrugged. "Ah well ... who cares?"
Kirava sat back down on the curb, finally, muttering something under her breath. "Knew I didn't like people for a reason."
"Gotta bolt." The other man said, glancing around him.
Goon grinned at Ed. "Goon hope see more late!" Very trusting fellow.
As he moved off, as if he’d just tipped off someone to kill him, Ed shouted back, "Bye, Goon!" He disappeared into the deepening gloom of the city night.
She sighed softly and swept her hair out of her face while gazing down at the pebbles again as if they offered some answers. When they didn’t, she began to shift them around, spelling out answers of her own and making random designs.
The big man’s eyes moved everywhere, but didn’t actually look at anything in particular. He said, "Goon tired."
Still quite busy with her stones, Kira said, "Sleep then," and nodded to him, not even looking up.
A big, gaping yawn threatened to be contagious when Goon yawned it. "If for need Goon carry lot, lot hurt people, Goon sleep in make fix place." He stumbled up to his feet, nodding all the way, which made standing straight a precarious project. He grinned at the nice lady who had kept him company. "Goon see nice talk lady more late?"
She offered only a noncommittal shrug. "Maybe."
As he bobbed his head in an emphatic nod, as though she’d promised him the world, she smiled a little. "Goodnight, Goon."
He waved wildly when she looked up, even though he was barely three feet away. Then he wandered inside the hospital, leaving her alone outside.