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"Nothing useful, unfortunately." He looks up from the various sharp metals and toward the woman behind him. Their meeting had made an impression, but it's been several weeks at least since then and he looks her over again, this time with the eye of a teacher. "I had hoped this place would provide some bullets, but we can do even without those. At least at first."

He stands and turns to face her, closing the lid of the trunk. "Well met again, sai Carnahan." Roland nods, then waves a hand toward the only place he sees to carry a weapon. "Would you mind if I looked in your gunna for the weapon? It'll be good to recognize what bullets you need, if I find any."

"My...? Oh--yes." Her bag, she supposes he means. And no, Mr. Deschain, you may not dig through it; she'll open it up and hand you the revolver case, and you can look at that. "It's a Webley & Scott. Same sort they use in the Army."

She did her research before she went asking for a gun, but they're swiftly coming to the end of what she learned. Hopefully he'll know a bit more from here about it. One gun can't be too different from another, can it? (Well, perhaps it can, but it seems like it's all essentially the same mechanism.)

"Do they?" The question's an absent one. He'll pay attention to any answer, but most of his attention goes to the case. Roland sits on the trunk he's just closed, setting the case on his lap so he can open it up. The gun within is similar to his own, at least compared to the others from other worlds that he's seen.

Unlike his, it breaks at the top to expose the cartridges and he does so, sliding one out and looking over every detail. "We'll have to see, but... powerful, I think." Placing the cartridge back inside, he closes the gun and hands it to her, keeping its case on his lap. "How familiar are you with it? Used it before, or cleaned it?"

"Yes." And since she doesn't know many details beyond that--and he doesn't seem particularly interested in the answer anyway--she falls quiet, watching him take a look at the gun.

Evy sits down next to him and takes the revolver when he hands it to her. "No--um." She shakes her head, wondering if cleaning it is something she should have attempted on her own prior to this point. "I never had reason to before now. I've only ever fired a gun once before now, actually--and it wasn't anything like this."

He nods, thinking and watching it in her hands. "Hold it a while. Keep your finger away from the trigger or keep it unloaded; best to get used to its weight before you actually fire." How to do this? From their first conversation, Roland thinks she serves the white as much as he does, in her way, but she's no gunslinger. If there's steel inside her, it's not the type to be pressed into a killing shape. How to teach just one part of that, and leave the rest? It's a question he's spent the last day thinking vaguely on.

Well. It can wait a little longer. "First I'd make certain you know how to take care of it. Without that, you can shoot bull's eyes until the river runs dry but it's still like to blow half your hand off or jam at the worst moment."

He sighs, quietly. "I'd show you with my own tools, if I had them. But I've been looking through Asgard's shops, and I think something can be adapted, if you decide you want it." Pity the poor gunslinger who hasn't even been able to relieve a little stress cleaning his gun properly.

Evy's eyebrows shoot up at the thought of blowing off a few fingers--you must understand, Mr. Deschain, she uses those. Learning to clean a gun it is, then. She holds it gingerly, considering its shape and size, and keeps her fingers well away from the trigger.

"I think we'll have to adapt," she says, after some thought. She glances up at him, trying to keep her expression placid, as though she dies and returns with a desire to learn firearms every day. With luck, she won't look as out of her depth as she feels. "Even if you had your, er, tools, I'd have to acquire my own eventually."

She's reminded of Rick again, and of sitting aboard the Sudan with him, watching him clean those monstrous guns of his. This, she takes for a good sign. She might not know Mr. Deschain's own abilities in any detail, but Rick was no slouch when it came to weaponry, and his habits would suggest that this is a necessary first step.

So did Roland, once upon a time. Of course his own missing fingers are symptom of a very different mistake, but. No sympathy here.

"True enough." He notes with approval how carefully she keeps her fingers in a safe area. She'd not seemed the type to treat the weapon lightly, certainly not once he'd warned about it. But it's still satisfying to see he's judged her well. And if a little of that hidden expression did show through, Roland would neither point it out nor see any shame in it. For one who's handled books her whole life instead of weapons, it's only right. That she's taking it seriously speaks well enough.

"Let's find a table." One hand holds her case to his side, and the other presses against a knee as he stands. "What we can do now is begin to show you how to break it down. I'd not do that on the floor, especially not with an unfamiliar weapon."

He starts out, heading toward one of the groups of rooms he'd noted earlier. "When we've time, we can collect some things with which to make your tools." It's possible he seems a little more than casually invested in this whole process. That may be because he is. Limited as the scope of this is and as frustrating the lack of supplies may be, it does feel good to teach again.

Evy stands after him, wondering how exactly one goes about carrying a gun while walking around, and quickly decides "pointed down" is likely good enough for the moment. Fingers away from the trigger, keeping its heft and feel in mind--she'll keep all his lessons in the front of her mind, an easy task at this point. There haven't been many so far.

Roland is right about her. She's not made for killing, and she'd rather not do anything of the sort; she regrets enough indirect deaths at her hands, never mind the possibility of being directly responsible. But maiming isn't beyond the pale--not when it's in self-defense, anyway--and one needs to be able to aim if one is going to hit a kneecap.

"What sort of tools do I need?" And here she'd thought a gun was enough.

Roland turns to look at her as he crosses the doorway of another room, this one with a few old tables and chairs and a small metal box sitting in one corner. She's got enough common sense to hold it properly, and that too is a good sign.

"For now, nothing more than some of these." He lifts the metal box onto one table and opens it. The things within are familiar enough to him; screwdrivers mostly, a mallet, loose screws and pins and similar things. "Do you remember how I opened your gun to check its bullets?" He sits in one of the chairs, waving a hand toward the other. "That's the first step. They need to be well out of the way before you start anything else."

It may be clear that he's not planning on demonstrating it again. It's hers to manage or fumble as she will, though as long as it's loaded he'll keep his hands close enough to take over if he needs to.

Edited (icon) 2014-04-01 16:42 (UTC)

They aren't unfamiliar items; they've simply been placed in a new context. That's a comforting realization, even if she rarely picks up a screwdriver normally anyway. She looks at them with some interest, trying to guess what each one's meant for and tempted to dig through the box for a closer look, until he speaks again.

This is a test, she knows, and a fair one. Prove you've been paying attention. Prove you can manage your own weapon--your primary tool--before you move on to more interesting bits. It's the sort of patience her own father instilled in her when she was far younger, presented with an array of tools meant for cleaning rather more delicate artifacts. Roland Deschain is nothing like Howard Carnahan, but there's something in the way he waits, watchful and expectant, that reminds her.

All that to say that she does as (indirectly) asked, and while her hands are hardly certain, she at least doesn't make too great a fool of herself. After she's set the bullets on the table, well out of the way, she looks up at him again, awaiting his next instruction.

"Start with the grip." He touches a screw about halfway up the side of that grip, then picks a couple screwdrivers out of the toolbox and studies them as he continues. "My own teacher never cared much about the order in which we broke the machine down, so long as we could put it back together after."

The corners of his eyes crinkle with a faint, amused smile as he hands her the right sized screwdriver. "Which isn't how he put it, exactly, but I don't think you need the same sort of encouragement. Study everything before you remove it. Remember. Until you know without thinking where each part goes, set it on the table in as close to the position from which it was removed as possible. There'll be a spring under either side the of grip, inside the frame; I'll show you how to push it out after you study how it fits inside."

Edited 2014-04-01 18:06 (UTC)

Evy takes the screwdriver, looking it over before she starts to use it, and smiles back at him. After a moment or two, she sets the screwdriver down, fishes out her glasses, and puts them on. Close work has never been her friend, despite how much of it she does in a day, and she'd like to be sure she's seeing all of this as clearly as possible.

As requested, she looks over every bit she removes, and she places everything neatly on the table. The thought of ending up with a gun-shaped silhouette is mildly interesting--and the idea of messy pile of pieces whose places she can't possibly guess is positively nightmarish. She glances up over the horn rim of her glasses at Mr. Deschain. "All right. So--the spring."

As before, Roland watches her, gaze resting a little more closely on the glasses than her for a few moments after she takes them out. "It's not very complex. You only have to find the right angle." He leans forward, gesturing toward the top of the spring and placing his fingers for a moment at its bottom. "Press here. Work your tool in at the top, until it slips out of the notch it's resting on."

While she does that, he'll dig a little through the toolbox and once she's done, one way or another, he'll set out a pin punch. "Then slip the cylinder off. That," he points to the punch, "goes through there. Then unscrew it, and take all three pieces out."

Something occurs to him then. It would go without saying, were she a gunslinger, but she isn't. Less reason to go hard with her, where it's not necessary. "Remember all of this. Afterward we'll be doing it again, and I'll not be giving instructions."

Unless she needs them, of course. But she doesn't have to know that part. Better she think - if she'll believe it - that he'll let her sit hours if necessary before she remembers each step on her own.

Edited 2014-04-03 11:31 (UTC)

"I feel like I ought to be writing all this down," she says, laughing a little, as she takes the pin punch from him.

Who knew the innards of a gun were so complex? There are more little bits and pieces than she expected; even laying everything out doesn't leave her feeling assured she'll know how to put it back. One screw looks about the same as the next to her. Perhaps this is what it feels like when others look at hieroglyphics and hieratic, a lot of all-too-similar parts making up an incomprehensible whole.

She does believe him when he says she'll be on her own next time. Mr. Deschain is a serious man, from what she's seen; his word, so far as she can tell, is good. And what better way to teach a person than to make her learn it for herself? It's something Evy suspects she ought to be dreading, but she respects the reasoning behind it.

Her fingers slip as she takes the three pieces out, and they all end up on the floor. "Oh, blast it," she mutters, setting the partially dissembled revolver down and sliding out of her chair to figure out where they've gone. "I'm sorry, I should've warned you. Sometimes I'm a bit...clumsy."

Roland slides the chair back and hunkers next to her, picking up one of the pieces and holding it out. "No harm done. All's still here. But that reminds me; if you were an apprentice I'd train that out of you 'till you could do this in your sleep. I think Eddie actually did, once." His lips twitch a moment, and he looks a little sad. It's good, probably, that he still thinks of them. Still, no point in dwelling now. "But that should be your choice."

Roland rises, sitting back on the chair and looking over the arrangement of the gun's parts. "Once we're done you'll know this, and without instruction. But anything beyond that's up to you. If you'd really like to write it down, by the way..." He shrugs with a smile that would almost be embarrassed, if he embarrassed so easily. "I don't see a reason you shouldn't. I'm afraid I still think of it as I would in my world. It didn't occur to me." It's that which almost gets to him; a gunslinger is supposed to adapt. Even in this small way, he knows now that he hasn't. Not completely.

Edited 2014-04-04 00:18 (UTC)

Evy takes it from him with a little nod of thanks and scoots back up onto her chair. The pieces go with the others, and she returns to puzzling over the revolver.

"You might try to train it out of me, and I'd be grateful." Evy gives him a teasing little grin. "But no one's succeeded yet. Anyway, I think I'll try this your way first." He is the expert here, after all, and she's already partway through taking the gun apart. If she does terribly when she's on her own, then she'll try writing out the steps.

After a quiet moment, she asks, "Who is Eddie?"

Roland watches her watching her gun and then leans forward, for a moment letting her question sit. "Unscrew these from either side," he says, pointing toward the two screws still holding the barrel on. "Then remove this lever. And that pin."

He sits back. "Eddie is..." After a moment, he decides to go with his first thought. The man himself would probably agree. "A pain in the ass. A good man, when he lets himself be. A good friend." Roland looks up at her, then realizes he's smiling. "And so focused on the task before you that he woke one night to find himself trying to disassemble Susannah's hand." He shrugs. "Gone days, I guess. When you lift the barrel there'll be a piece where the screw was, here. Be careful of it."

Perhaps he'd rather not talk about it. She could hardly blame him; while she speaks rather frequently of her brother, there are others from home she she hasn't really mentioned to anyone.

But then he answers, and she listens as she unscrews the pieces he pointed out. At his admonition to beware one of the pieces, she glances up. "Why?"

Once it's sorted, and she's considering her weapon again, she decides another question couldn't hurt. "And Susannah? Is she a friend as well?"

"Susannah... yes. She is. Eddie's wife, and the other trained under my hand. They'll make fine gunslingers one day, both of them. Even if I'm not there to see it."

He realizes then that she must be waiting for his instruction before she can continue. Probably only expected a brief answer. "Pardon." Roland leans forward and squints a little, turning his head to get a better angle on the particular piece in question. "I think that part'll be easy to lose, and it's got other small parts inside it. There's a pin, a piece here, and another spring. Things this small don't always have to be removed, not under normal circumstances, but it's good to know how in case they break or something gets stuck between them."

"Shall we take them out now, then?" Evy frowns down at everything he points out, holding the piece a little closer to get a proper look. It's like wheels within wheels to her; she genuinely never expected firearms to involve so many moving parts, nor such small ones. But she suspects she's voiced enough declarations of her own ignorance in the last few minutes.

And so, when she does speak again, it's to ask quietly, "Do you miss them? Susannah and Eddie, I mean."

"I think so. Probably best if you get used to doing it, especially while I'm here." He digs in the toolbox for a few seconds, then pulls out a couple smaller versions of the tools they've already got out and sets them a safe distance away from all the disassembled parts.

Business taken care of, he sits back and watches her, giving her time to begin and focus on the task before he answers her other question. "Them, and my-- and Jake. I'd known none of them more than... two months, maybe, before I was taken here. I love them still." He lets that sit a moment, then studies her. "And you? Do you miss those you've left behind?" Roland doesn't really expect the answer to be anything other than, 'yes, of course'. But one question for another.

Well, if they're going to pull these apart, too, so be it. Evy doesn't find this tedious exactly, but it doesn't have the natural draw that learning a new alphabet does. And frankly, she's not all that good at it. Doing things with her hands has never been her strong suit, and struggling isn't something she's used to on a regular basis.

But she'll be damned if she gives up, and so she continues doggedly and eventually thinks to answer his question. (His--Jake. Well, she can fill in the blanks there, and even if it's illegal, she's not going to throw stones. It's hardly her business to start with.) "Jonathan, mostly. He's my brother--and he's an absolute nightmare at times, but I...well, he's the only family I have. I've never really--I mean, even when we were at school, we'd write letters."

"How long have you been away from him?" Roland gives her another moment to finish up what she's doing, then leans forward and points to one of the nearby parts. "Next, the screws on either side here. Then pull this off."

"I've been here...oh, several months now. It's hard to keep track of days without a proper calendar." She begins to unscrew where he points, keeping her eyes firmly on the weapon. So she can concentrate on what she's doing, of course, not because she doesn't want to meet Mr. Deschain's eyes. Obviously. "Of course, it means he isn't getting the pair of us into some kind of trouble, which is a nice change, but..."

She shrugs after a moment or two, her voice small and rueful. "When I go back to Egypt, I'm sure I'll wonder how I could ever have missed him and all the--all the trouble that comes with him. But right now, I do."

"It's not quite the same with Eddie, but similar, I think. Easy to forget how dear someone is when you're blinded by the urge to shake them until their teeth fall out." Roland smiles at her a moment, exasperated and fond. "Until they remind you."

Then he leans forward again, smile fading into something a little more businesslike. "The trigger guard next. Two screws, here." Once more, he gives her a moment before continuing. "Egypt? That's the name of your land?"

Edited 2014-04-09 00:40 (UTC)

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