Bert was halfway through a strong one when Phoenix flopped down in a chair opposite her at the table. Around them, Smack-dab's moderate group of customers had gotten back to their business, either departing Smack-dab to escape impending doom, or enjoying free booze and food before departing Smack-dab to escape impending doom. Now all that was left were a couple stragglers with big stomachs and, with a distant expression on her face, Bert.

"We've got one hell of a problem," she stated.

Phoenix started, jumping a little too quickly into a nervous grin and awkward laugh. "Problem, ha ha ha, what problem?" A bead of sweat abseiled down his forehead.

Bert looked up from her drink, eyebrow raised. "The fact that I just threatened the lord of Can't Be Buried, or can you think of something else I should be worried about?"

"Oh!" Phoenix replied, awash with relief. "Ha ha, yes yes, what a conundrum. Mmm, indeed. Tricky little number, that."

Bert eyed him up for a moment longer, uncertain what stupidity was on her chef's mind this time. But, she decided it couldn't nearly be half as bad as what just happened.

She took a deep breath. "I think I might have just said some things I shouldn't have, Phoenix."

The adventurer visibly relaxed, leaning forwards in his chair. His face, for once, looked like it might actually understand the gravity of the situation it was in. Now if only it could do that all the time, hell, maybe Smack-dab wouldn't have been in this mess.

"Look, if we could go back in time, maybe there were a couple of lines that we could take out," Phoenix replied. "But that was insane! Standing up to him, I mean. He was what, like, three times your size? Four?"

Bert felt a smirk prick the edge of her lips, the burning liquid pouring through her veins sufficient to start making the bad ideas good again. "I could have taken him. It was you and the others I had to worry about."

Phoenix smiled back. "It's nice to know you care enough to worry about me."

"Well, who's gonna do the cooking if you're gone, right? And you won't catch me out there hunting."

He laughed softly, and even though that laugh usually meant something stupid was about to happen, it at least made her start to feel better. A little better, anyway. Like, a fraction. A small fraction, anyway. Still, however minute the betterness, it was most assuredly more than zero betters. And in the Waste, folks got to cling to what they can.

Silence resumed between the pair, each staring into the other's eyes. Bert contemplated what to say next as she swirled the contents of her glass tumbler in her fingers - contemplating what to do next was still miles away, and quite a few more drinks. And then Phoenix started leaning in, his eyes slowly closing over. She felt his hot man breath wash over her face and suddenly, quite suddenly, she realised what the hell was about to happen.

Bert rocked back in her chair, slapping Phoenix across the face with her metal hand. It clanged loudly against his cheek, and he spun out of his chair in shock, clattering to the floorboards as Bert took to her feet. Her face flushed red, eyebrows closing in tight on each other.

"What in the fucking hell, Phoenix?" she growled, but more shocked than angry.

Phoenix scrabbled on the floor, clutching at his face and looking up pitifully at his boss. Tears welled in the eye above what was now becoming quite the red splodge on his face. It made a nice contrast to the black and blue from his earlier encounter. "I thought we were having a moment!"

"We were having a moment!"

"Nooo, I thought we were having a moment moment!"

"A moment moment?"

"A moment moment! You know." he mewed.

"Oh come on, Phoenix!" she said. "Why do you always have to be such a man?"

"I am a man..."

"Not every moment is a moment moment."

"But some moments become moment moments when you're not expecting moment moments," he cried.

"That moment was just a moment, not a moment moment. It was just a regular moment."

"It felt really moment moment to me, Bert. We were staring into each other's eyes and everything!"

"It was just a normal moment, Phoenix, of two friends. One of whom works for the other. That's it."

"Are we just plain old friends?"

"We're good friends, Phoenix. But don't get all momenty on me for saying it. I won't admit it again if you do."

He paused.

"I feel weird saying the word moment, now. I've said it too many times in a row."

"Oh for the love of-" Bert sighed, finally relaxing and stepping back towards her prone chef. "Get off the ground, you ass."

"Moment," Phoenix repeated, shakily finding the floorboards beneath his feet. "Mooooment."

Bert reached down with her human hand and yanked him ungracefully up, resetting his fallen chair so that he could sit down and be stable for a while.

Phoenix rubbed his face softly, wincing at the pressure. "Did you have to hit me with your metal hand?"

Bert smiled, a snort of a laugh coming out of nowhere up her throat. "I'm sorry, Phoenix. You really took me by surprise."

He mocked a frown. "Are you laughing at me, now?"

"Hey," Bert said, the snort rolling into a giggle. "It's pretty funny. I mean, I just hit you. Right in the face."

"It really hurts."

She started laughing fully now, all the shock and anger and fear of the day finally coming uncorked and spraying like an out of control fizzy grog. Phoenix started smiling too, then he too couldn't contain it any longer. He burst out laughing as well, systematically bellowing, then wincing, then laughing at the pain, then wincing again. Bert's cheeks were starting to hurt from the smiling, but presumably not as much as Phoenix's were gonna hurt tomorrow.

Meatsack, obviously hearing people laughing, came running over to join in, sitting down in a chair at the table and chuckling happily despite having no idea why anyone was doing it, or what was funny in the first place. He just liked it when people laughed, and he liked being a part of it.

The three of them laughed like the world was actually happy and they weren't all going to die horribly, even as the last of Smack-dab's customers found their way to the front door and out into the Waste. Soon, though, as was inevitable, the laughter ebbed and eventually died, leaving only an empty, quiet Smack-dab and the chittering wind that shook it.

Bert and Phoenix held each other's eyes again in neither a moment nor a moment moment. This was a moment of knowing, and understanding, but of wordlessness. What could they say to each other, when they were both haunted by the image of a towering great bloody bandit and his stupid, shiny lightbulb-faced companion? Meatsack was present, of course, but he wasn't a part of the moment. He was just happy to be there.

Bert finally did something to break the static. She placed her glass down, her elbows onto the table and her head into her hands, sighing deeply into them. The laughter had truly faded now, leaving only a dark hole behind. "What the hell now, Phoenix?" she said.

Phoenix and Meatsack looked on, worry moving across both their faces. Though Meatsack mostly without knowing what to worry about.

Bert kept her head down, speaking through her hands. "If we're here in a week, there's no way we can fight off Brown's army. We'll lose everything."

"And be ground into concrete," added Phoenix, if a little unhelpfully.

Bert looked briefly up at him with an angry glare. "Yeah, thanks. And ground into concrete." She pressed her face back into the relative safety of her hands.

Phoenix stared at her.

Meatsack stared at both her and Phoenix.

The wind wailed.

"Let's run away," Phoenix finally said, shuffling forwards towards her.

Bert looked up, confused. "Run away? What about Smack-dab?"

"Err," Phoenix replied, "we leave it behind. You need to let it go, Bert. Let all of this pain go. We'll run south to Second Edin or Crumble or something. Somewhere where there's no Farmer Brown. I'll grow a moustache so the Overlords don't recognis-."

Bert brought her hands down on the table hard, giving Meatsack a fright. "Absolutely not! -sorryMeatsack- We're not leaving Smack-dab alone to be torn apart by the likes of Farmer fucking Brown."

"What's the use in fighting? He has an army! You only have me, and this thing." He thumbed at Meatsack, who was trying to correct the balance of his chair after nearly toppling over at the fright. "Now, I could take down a fair chunk of his army by myself, but it's still too much even for me to handle."

Bert scowled, but it wasn't a scowl of her usual Bertrage. It was a scowl carefully painted over despair, over desperation. "We can't just leave Smack-dab, Phoenix. This bar is my life's work! If we let some arrogant bandit lord lay his filthy fingers all over it, what was the whole point in being alive? The Woman will have died for nothing - for a dream that we'd be shitting all over. This is our home! You can't just let anyone walk in and take your home. Or else, what do you have in life?"

"Well what are you going to do, Bert?" Phoenix was starting to lean over the table, ass above the chair rather than on it. "Who's pissed off enough at Farmer Brown to help you fight him, huh?"

"I don't know, Phoenix. The Second Thought militia, maybe? Highway bandit tribes?"

Phoenix shook his head, still leaning on the table. "First off, the Second Thought militia consists of about six retired sheriffs who just sit around and smoke all day. Yeah, great army. And bandit tribes, Bert? Really? You hate bandits!"

Bert shot to her feet, her chair flying out from underneath her, startling Phoenix and Meatsack once again. "You're right, Phoenix -sorryMeatsack- I hate bandits. Yeah, I want to find every one of the bastards and do to them so much worse than they've ever done to me. I want to cut bits off their bodies they've never even heard of. But you know what? You said it yourself, what choice do I have? Do we have? If we could convince them to help us, maybe we've got half a chance of putting a dent in Brown's numbers - making him think twice about messing with Smack-dab."

"A couple of bandit tribes won't be enough to beat Brown, Bert..."

"Well I don't know. We'll make another alliance at the same time. You can go up to the Starry Place and offer free grog in return for soldiers. The Woman did that sometimes back in the day and it occasionally even worked."

"Bert..."

But Bert was already moving away from the table, storming behind the bar reaching for a thick coat and a grubby pint glass full of bullets. "We're doing this, Phoenix. Pick up your rifle and get some food for the road."

"Bert," he repeated, softly this time. Phoenix stepped away from the table, around Meatsack, towards the bar where Bert now stood, threading her small arms into the sleeves of a long trench coat. It was clearly too big for her, but it had been tucked at the hem and tightened around the waist to fit more snugly to her slight figure. The coat, most noticeably, had a patchwork front, new scraps of random material sewn over bullet holes from a time long-passed. A time where a different woman wore this coat.

"Bert," Phoenix said again, close to her now. "Think about what you're doing. It's just a bar."

She froze while clasping up the coat. Something burned behind her eyes, and her human hand visibly trembled. She brought her gaze slowly up to meet Phoenix's, the whites of her eyes sparkling with a film of water. "It's not just a bar, Phoenix," she said, forcing her volume to remain level. "You know this is more than a bar. This is home. This is life! Smack-dab keeps us safe from the Waste, and now we have to keep her safe in return."

Phoenix said nothing back. Even he had to admit when he was defeated. Arguing with Bert was like bashing his skull against an old brick wall. Except if he bashed his head against an old brick wall, he might actually break it down one day. So, really, arguing with Bert was worse than bashing his head against an old brick wall.

Bert started moving again, finishing the clasps on her coat and filling pouches on her belt with fresh bullets. Or at least bullets as fresh as can be in the Waste. They weren't exactly common, and most folk had forgotten how to make them. "You're going up the mountain, I'm going to the Highway. And Meatsack?"

The mutant stood up quickly and saluted, a clumsy gesture with a hand practically too wretched to even reach his forehead.

"Meatsack, you're locking up behind us and watching the bar, OK? Don't let anybody in while Berty and Phoenix are out."

He nodded quickly and smiled.

Phoenix was still on the same spot, staring at his boss with his bearded jaw hanging slack. Finally he shook his head. "You're nuts."

"We're all nuts," Bert snapped back. "This is the Waste."

And with that, it was time to go recruit a little firepower.

* * *

Ever had a moment moment in real life, or a moment you thought was a moment moment? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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