[ There's a lot about fatherhood and family life he hadn't been prepared for; that was why he had run from it for so long. He could have anticipated what parts of him would chafe against this arrangement, and all of the ways in which it would not be the idyll Abigail had been convinced it would be. In that was all of the obvious reasons; his raw temper, the danger each day held, his lack of patience. Every likelihood said that Jack would one day wake up fatherless - and John's too aware of what little guarantee there was that he would be any worse off for it.
There were the obvious stones in the road - obvious to him, if not Abigail. He'd learned some things since Clemens Point. He was ready to try and steer around them now, if that was what better would take.
Tonight is not a stone in the road. It is no jagged tooth that John can see coming. This is something common, but hidden; a rattlesnake in the grass that he'd learned to live with, sounding its tail.
John still feels the shaggy rope around his neck as he bursts back into consciousness, shooting upright from the hard floorboards as his heart pounds in his ears. He grabs for it at his throat, rolling over to his elbows. His lungs still feel hungry, his throat still burns. Normally, this would be where such an episode started, and ended; he would hold his head between his shoulders until his breathing calmed and the phantoms in the dark evaporated.
Normally, he didn't lift his head to see his son's round and frightened eyes staring back at him from the darkness.
His blood turns to rain, and the air in the room thins uncomfortably. The bed rustles behind him, and John has had all that he can take. ]
Stay here.
[ Murmured under his breath as he climbs to his feet and quickly removes himself from the room, seeking the staircase in his haze. He feels the splintering handrail under his fingers and stairs passing too quickly beneath his feet, and then he's outside, the air thick and hot and filled with buzzing insects and croaking bullfrogs. John picks a direction and walks, quickly. ]
[With lives like the ones they'd led, being a light sleeper was something of a necessity. Even at their most safe, the winds could always change; there was always the chance of some kind of threat, and she'd only become more attuned to such things since Jack had come along. It wasn't unusual that sounds beyond their room or tent would cause her to stir, even if just for a moment, but tonight it was something much closer.
John is already halfway out the door by the time she comes to enough to call out after him, voice low, a soft creak to it thanks to the night's disuse.]
John?
[She furrows her brow in his wake, then gently smooths Jack's hair back from his forehead so that she can press a kiss against his temple, shushing him softly as she sits up and tucks him snugly into their shared blankets.]
Back to sleep, darlin'. I'll be right back.
[Still half-asleep, Jack doesn't have enough fight in him to protest; he grabs at her wrist as she stands, but his tiny hand quickly falls away, too tired to put forth much effort. Abigail watches for a moment to see that he's settled before she reaches for her shawl, pulling it around her shoulders as she slips out of their room and quietly closes the door behind her.
No sign of John, but it's not hard to guess where he'd gone; she hears the front door open and shut and takes the stairs at a brisk pace. A moment later and she's outside, as well; nightfall hasn't done much to break the day's heat, not in these parts, and she pads through the grass barefoot as her gaze searches for him, spotting him in the distance, her pace quickening.]
John!
['Stay here,' he'd said. She's long been a selective listener.]
[ Somewhere in his path, near to the Belle, grows a huge and gnarled old tree. There is where John rests, but only in a manner of speaking; he stops walking forward and instead wheels indecisively, one step in one direction to turn and walk two more that way as his thoughts overrun themselves.
Had he still been quartered by himself, this was where his evening would go; he would pace like this in the dead of night until the swell of his thoughts once again obeyed their banks and quieted, at least somewhat. Once that happened, John would naturally drink himself back to sleep, and the colours of that day - the rope at his neck - would once again fade until they didn't anymore.
This would not be the first time someone found him in a state. He could tell from voice and tone alone that it could be the first time it didn't mean a few dark hours spent in awkward, companionable silence.
John slows, and instead of turning to face her, turns sharply away. ]
[If he'd turned to face her, maybe it would have been enough to assure her that he was right, that she should go back, but the fact that he doesn't makes her all the more hesitant to do so. Worry gnaws at her stomach, not entirely unlike the way it does whenever he's away from camp a little too long, and she furrows her brow as she continues towards him, slowing her pace as she approaches.]
Not without you.
[Her tone is almost scolding, but not quite. Here, when it's just them, she wears her concern plainly, out in the open.]
Don't think I missed that somethin' ain't right.
[Her voice softens slightly, and she reaches out to gently catch one of his arms from behind.]
[ His blood runs cold again. A flash-flood of rigidity overwhelms his entire body as his arm is caught, even gently.
It's ripped from her just as soon with force that staggers John, shoves him away from the old tree and its burls, and sends him into a clumsy spin, wheeling him around to face her fully with his hunted posture. His unguarded, frightened, bright eyes. The rapid rise and fall of his shoulders and his hot breath in the night.
A flash of the truth. John had a fallback normally, when this much of him was melted down and reduced, when the core of him almost had air. He knew how and when to push people away. Threats and shouting and piss and vinegar usually did the trick. If it had been one of the guys, he might have swung. John Marston is still figuring out what better looks like. He knows it doesn't smell like piss or vinegar.
The problem is that he has no other cover to hide beneath. With no cudgel to grab, there's nothing else to stand between Abigail and this half-second look at what he tried to hide. ]
I just--
[ Some kind of shell begins to grow over it again; he firms himself up, his face hardens, he makes a pathetic retreat further behind the tree to smear his eyes against his arm. ]
I just need a damn minute. [ He drops here, once the tree stands between him and the Belle, and presses his back against its hard bark. ] I ain't goin' nowhere. Go back in with the boy.
[ The last thing anybody needs is Jack following them out into the night and stepping on a cottonmouth, or wandering too close to the marshy creeks, or eavesdropping from the balcony. John exhales as he wrangles his breathing to a manageable measure, and lowly, adds; ]
[She's seen him all kinds of ways in the years they've known one another, even seen him scared a time or two even if he wouldn't have been one to admit it— but never like this. There's fear there, no doubt, but it's still different, something raw and deep, hunted.
It's gone almost as soon as it appears, but he's deliberate in putting the tree between them, and she doesn't miss the way he drags his arms across his eyes. She doesn't miss the effort to stay as close to steady as he can manage in his voice, and it breaks her damn heart.]
He'll be fine. I told him to stay put and go back to sleep. He won't follow— he's a good boy.
[Better at listening and taking direction than she's ever been.
"Please."
She can't see his face when he says it, but she doesn't need to. Something wells up in her throat, empathy making her chest feel tight as though she could take on whatever pain he's feeling for herself— that part of her that loves him so damn much that she'd never been able to stay angry or move on, no matter how she might have tried, no matter how he might have insisted she should.]
John.
[She says his name again, softer now, but no less stubborn. She sounds closer, but she allows the tree to remain between them.]
You can take as many minutes as you want, but you could let me help you. You don't gotta do everything by yourself. It ain't supposed to be that way anymore.
[ The urge to push back, to viciously guard his hurt against her, rises in his throat like bile.
He presses his fingers hard through his hair, hangs his head between his shoulders. He swallows it back - but it takes some effort. That isn't better. He's wounded, there's an arrow in his leg - but she doesn't know any better when she offers to yank it out. It's not Abigail's fault she can't feel what her idea of help would do to him. ]
You can't. [ A sharp-edged smile that fails to touch his eyes can be heard in his voice, in the dry and humourless chuckle that follows at the mere idea, of being helped, ] Not unless you can make what happened--
[ Make it what, John? Go away, probably. Save him the trouble of running from it. The smile dies, and he lets the colony of frogs fill the silence.
Well, she doesn't understand. Maybe that's the problem. Once she knows, then she could stop asking - realize just how far out of her depth she was wading, that she really couldn't help. Maybe she'd see why he never wanted to agree to better. Maybe it'd be her and Jack gone for a year instead, to find some more suitable father for the boy. The magic trick would be over, and Abigail might see for the first time the gulf that laid between the man she thought she saw in him and what he really was. They could part calmly, and they would be a nice-while-it-lasted forever. It'd be for the best. Better, maybe, looked like this.
And, really, facing down that future is much simpler when he can just stare at the dirt between his feet and feel the old tree standing between the two of them while he talks. John swallows. ]
I, ah... I dunno what all them told you about me. About how I ended up here, ridin' with them.
[ He's sure Arthur hasn't. He's never seemed to like talking about it much more than John himself has - and, in the time of his absence, he can imagine his brother set himself to putting anything that risked sympathy out of his mind where John was concerned. Dutch, he thinks, wouldn't much care to - John can't imagine he speaks much with Abigail now that she's not working anymore. Hosea likely didn't consider it polite conversation for a lady. ]
Edited ("them others" and other wording choices that bothered me) 2025-03-02 23:24 (UTC)
[She studies his face in the half-light of the moon as he cuts himself off, her brow furrowed as she searches for something more, stubbornly standing her ground even as he pushes back against her— she sets her jaw, watching him expectantly, and when he relents, even just the tiniest bit, her gaze softens.
She's never looked at anyone else in camp the way she looks at him, even at the worst of times.]
Nothin' much.
[She'd asked about him plenty when she was still a fresh face in the camp, curious to learn more about him when he'd been so unwilling to let himself be known, and she'd gotten all kinds of answers about who he was in the present— but never how he'd got there.
Everyone in this camp had stories. It really ought to be up to each and every one of them if they wanted to share.]
Just knew you'd been ridin' with them a long time. Anything else was your own business. Figured if it was somethin' you thought I needed to know, you'd tell me.
[It wasn't like she didn't have her own story about how she'd found her way to them that she didn't particularly care to revisit.]
[ No, he doesn't think. He knows. Of all the things in his life, this is the one he knows best. There were precious few points of absolute consistency in his life, and the day Dutch van der Linde found him is one of them. But, John hopes, if he keeps speaking these lapses of memory into existence, then the day may come where he no longer needs to.
So he doesn't particularly want to revisit it. Every time he's been taken back to this point in his personal history has been against his own will, through dreams, or the image of hangings done, or from the full-body startle a rough hand yanking him around can sometimes inspire. Or more recently, wet-rat gunslingers trying to remind him of where he'd come from when he finds his mouth outpacing his good senses of discretion, and he dares to question the heading they all walk beneath. He saved us had started to turn into He saved you, as though daring to expect better of the man who had changed the miserable trajectory of his life were some unspeakable sin.
Unfortunately, John has already tied himself to a horse called Better. It's determined to drag him galloping down this unkempt road until it beats him bloody.
John pulls his hands out of his hair and down his face, drives the grime into his skin, and exhales harshly as he stares it down. ]
They was hangin' me. Homesteaders up in Illinois, or somewhere.
[She'd known he'd been young. It was one of the things they'd talked about in the early days, being cut from the same cloth. Couple of orphans all on their own in the world, until they weren't— doing what it took to survive, even if it wasn't pretty.
Part of her had probably thought the outlaw life romantic back then, damn foolish though it was, but what other place was there for folk like them?
He says it like he doesn't know for sure— how old he'd been, where it had happened, but she knows better. A body doesn't forget a thing like that. There are moments that never leave you, haunt you your whole damn life. Being hanged has to be one of them.
She wants to reach out to him. She starts to, catching herself and curling her fingers tightly into the skirt of her nightdress instead, staying her hand. The next words come low and quiet, her brow furrowed as a number of emotions begin to war with one another, each fighting to come out on top. She finds herself caught somewhere between anger and heartache.]
What could a twelve year old boy do worthy of a hangin'?
[Nothin'. Not a damn thing. There's no answer anyone could give that she would consider good enough reason.]
[ It would have been a good time to push her away with a dose of morbidity, had he not been chasing down Better.
The reality was that he'd done his share by then, and the hanging wasn't the only memory that hounded him. That particular sin hadn't been what the homesteaders were pulling him up for, but he'd feared that the Lord would descend from Heaven and strike him down even before the noose had touched his skinny neck. He remembers too vividly the pounded-in throb in his face, tossing the stolen gun in black creek-water. Curling up in his trash-heap and crying until morning for the sick twist in his gut.
His honesty could take a more vague form this evening, while he's indulging it. Instead; ]
I can think of a couple things. [ John sniffs. ] Weren't any of them what I got a noose for, though. They caught me rustlin' chickens, stealin' crops.
[ He pauses, lets the crime hang a moment in the air. ]
[Her gaze darkens, the crease between her brows deepening.
It may have been a crime, but not one worthy of a noose. She'd been hungry. Some part of her had once wanted to believe that there were some people out there who might take pity on a child in such a situation, maybe show some kindness and send them on their way with a stern warning and maybe even some table scraps, but that sort of kindness had never been her experience. It shouldn't come as a surprise that John had never known it, either— but it hurts to hear it for certain all the same.]
That ain't worth hangin' for.
[There's a strange, hard-edged note in her voice, a quieter kind of anger than the temper she usually put on display, fire still burning hot beneath it.]
Anyone who can condemn another human bein' for just trying to stay alive... guess all those people are the sort what never felt real hunger in their damn lives.
[A pause, just for a moment, and she purses her lips, studying his face again.]
[ And that had been that. There was the farmers, the parasite they'd found in their chicken coop, and the noose in their hands. In their eyes, he's sure, he wasn't any different from a hungry rat in their grain silo. Letting him go wouldn't have put food back on their table - and John remembers his gnawing hunger being fierce enough to consume any sternly-delivered warning. They'd have had to kill him to stop him from taking what he'd needed. They'd probably learned that some time before John started targeting their fields.
Had that been what John had been dreaming about? Yes and no. For his whole life, and not at all. He feels Abigail observing him, but doesn't glance over. He angles his face away, gently, fingers restless on the sleeve of his bedclothes. ]
They caught me in them coops at sundown - two big fellers. Grabbed me and beat my little ass to shit. Even if I hadn't been starved... I remember kickin', swingin', bitin' when I could. Spittin'. Tryin' anything I could to get away. Ain't mattered none to them farmers, twice my size. They pulled my hands behind my back--
[ Tied them, he skips over, crushed them together in rope until it felt like his thin wristbones were scraping against one another in his arms. John's fingers twitch inward against the fabric of his sleeve. ]
Put me on this big bastard workhorse with the rope at my neck. Felt like I was ridin' a mountain. My legs never been split so wide. Feller who was holdin' the straight end twisted his hands around it with this smile.
[ There are pieces he's sure are exaggerated by his child-mind, reflected in even further nightmarish proportion in his own psyche. This, though, remains consistent. ]
[Each detail paints the picture a little bit clearer, makes her throat feel just a little bit tighter. Until now, she'd given him his space; he'd pulled away so sharply that it had been clear enough he'd needed it, but standing back don't feel right anymore.
She steps forward at last, steadily cautious in her approach as she rounds what of the tree remains between them, sinking to the ground to sit beside him, the grass cool against the worn fabric of her nightgown.
He hasn't been able to look at her for a minute, she'd noted. Her gaze lands on his restless fingers, and she wants to take his hand, to put her arms around him, anything at all— she doesn't know what good any of it would do, but she wants to be able to offer him comfort so badly, to do anything that might make him feel just the tiniest bit at ease, more like himself.
She settles for bringing her hand to rest lightly above his knee, a cautious reassurance.]
Some things... they never leave you, do they.
[She can't pretend to understand exactly what he must feel, but she knows what it is to be haunted. There were a million other lost souls out there just like them, who had no one, who hadn't been lucky enough to survive by the skin of their teeth. John almost hadn't been.]
[ This is the uncomfortable part of disclosure, the part he truly dreads.
Cutting open his chest and letting someone touch the bare wetness of his heart was a frightening ordeal in and of itself. Letting them see his childish nightmares, revealing those puerile fears to the cold open air for mocking voices and prodding fingers - that was uncomfortable enough. Most would think him a weak child for allowing this to dominate his nights. Their stories hadn't been much different, and they hated the reminder nearly as much as John himself did.
Pitying affection was another thing entirely. John's first urge is to pull his leg away, to remove her hand from him. Hands offered to him and pats on the back felt as easy to stomach as glass. He'd take the mockery and gawking over this, but he supposes that's what he signed up for. He's acting like a child - a sniveling, frightened little boy - and he's getting treated like one. He firms himself up and takes a breath. ]
Wasn't no lawman there to save me. Was them three came ridin' in. Dutch, Arthur, Hosea. Wouldn't be here if it weren't for the three of them.
[ Three horseman-shaped smears in a painterly sunset, soaring over the landscape, just before the horse surged out from underneath him and he was left to drop and choke. ]
I saw 'em ridin' up, but I guess... all the people came out to watch me die. Couldn't imagine anyone would be comin' to help.
[ Something else that had hung from him since that day; the number of people scared from their farm shacks to watch the hanging. Women abandoning dinner, hand in hand with their own children. All of the troubles they had pinned to the breath of an underfed, underhoused, underwashed boy. They must have thought they would kill all of their problems with him.
And, as the memory comes back to him, in the frogsong and the splashing of the marshland around them, John snorts. Even as that long-ago rope tightens around his throat ]
You believe the first thing I heard from 'em was Dutch?
[All those people, showing up to watch a skinny little boy die. She clenches her jaw to keep herself from saying anything she shouldn't; she's never been shy about speaking her mind, but maybe, in this moment, it's best not to. She'd insisted on following him, on staying with him even though he'd demanded she go back, that he just needed a minute. She can still give him that time, even as she insists on being by his side.
Her hand remains precisely where it is, for now, and that snort of his causes one corner of her mouth to give the slightest twitch.]
I believe it. Likes to make an entrance, don't he?
[She'd already known they owed Dutch their very lives, but not necessarily how very literal that had been for John.]
I see why they never told me. Ain't their story to tell.
[ This stands more chance of loosening the phantom noose around his neck than addressing the seriousness of what he'd just imparted, one of the few details from that day he could pull into gallows humor. John snorts again, descending for a moment into rare and wheezing laughter, before trying again; ]
You know how he talks? The way his voice is - good and steady and low when he's quiet, but then when he gets loud-- all honkin' and goose-like?
[ Even as a young man, he had that quality in his voice; passion and emotion riveted it until it cracked. ]
Feller whacked the horse so it ran out from under me, and I dropped, and I heard-- [ Stand by, his own voice is breaking up into wheezing and laughter, ] I heard him, honkin' away: 'Arthur, they're hangin' the boy! Arthur, they're hangin' him!'
[ This dark and idle amusement of John's probably wasn't anything funny to Abigail, this memory-relic from a time in which Dutch put John's life above his own means, this glimpse at a younger time. But it's honest - as honest as the quiet, thin, wheezing laugh John has for it. Dutch had always been a man with a penchant for flair and showmanship, but there had been none to be had for him that day. Their intervention hadn't been about a show; it had been about doing the right thing. ]
Well, anyhow. Next thing I knew, I was on Arthur's horse. He was yankin' the noose loose. I heard him all around me - 'I got 'im, Dutch,' - and I guess there was some gunfight over it. I don't remember that so well. But I been ridin' with them three ever since.
[ He hadn't been able to imagine a life where he hadn't ridden with them. Likely because, he thinks, there wouldn't be one. He'd have died tied to that tree. ]
[For a moment, she can only stare at him in response when his laugh hits her, puzzled more than anything else; it's thin and reedy and distant, but a moment later, her lips have crooked to one side as she offers a faint smile in return, blindsided by his reaction as she is.
The story, the finer details of it— none of it is a laughin' matter, but she she can almost hear Dutch for herself, the way he is when he raises his voice, when he's all stirred up about something. Honkin' really did sum it up nicely.
She's always known that the relationship Arthur and John had with the gang's co-founders was different from the rest; there'd never been any doubt that it was familial, even if she hadn't known the details of how John came to be there. Never seemed to matter much. Loyalty mattered to him, and that feeling ran deep. She'd always liked that about him, too.
She's laughing with him now, softly; it's good to hear him laugh like this, enough so that it eases her anxiety ever so slightly.]
Can see why you would, after all that.
[She knows he owes his life to Dutch. In a way, so does she— though not so directly. He's done a lot for them over the years.
She removes her hand from his knee, gently taking one of his own hands between both of hers without looking down. Instead, she keeps her gaze fixed on him, and there's no pity in it, but understanding, patience. For all the barbs they might exchange in mixed company, her thorns are nowhere to be found now.]
Dreams play tricks sometimes. Try to fool us into thinking we never escape our worst memories. Got more power over us than they oughta, feels like. Don't seem fair, does it? Can't fight back when we're asleep.
[ He supposes, privately, that that fits; he hadn't been much good at fighting back at the time, either.
The moment dies, of course. It always does. The only difference is that John hadn't been the one to kill it this time, not with some out-of-line comment or snippy remark. It isn't John that comes to defense of himself. It's the simple reminder that light peal of laughter pinning beneath his own deals him, the reminder that he's not alone in this moment. He's leading Abigail through it, sharing in that private and grim amusement he'd taken with him through the years, and she is partaking in it, with no thorniness or reprisal. Something in his chest withers in response, and he feels its legs break beneath him.
He can't find or name what just died. That doesn't stop him from mourning it, from touching the new hollow in his chest and feeling heavy regret sink his gut.
Maybe he could perform an autopsy on this fresh carcass he's carrying inside of himself later. If he's lucky, he could find a sober and dark corner to brood in and be left alone, and he could identify what he wanted to participate in - what had been taken from him in that moment, who took it, and what poison they had used. Why he felt, at once, exposed and alone - relieved and horribly sad. But not now. This particular sober corner is already reserved for Better, and that's what he's going to try to do. Even as his entire body compels him to stand and leave her here to this tree. John, silent, rubs at his forearms and looks up at the tree branches.
They could have held his weight, he thinks. ]
It always goes wrong. They don't come sometimes, or they're-- [ The words stick in his throat, ] --watchin', or... sometimes it's like the horse is the rope, and it takes off with me draggin' behind, and they never get me.
[She doesn't draw his attention back to her. Let him look where he will, do what he needs to get through the moment. That he's sharing it at all— that has to be a step towards something better. Healing, maybe? Seems silly even to think it, too lofty, but even she knows there's power in speaking something aloud, something what's been playing shadow for God knows how long.]
All them what-ifs.
[What-ifs and impossibilities, a memory twisted up into countless nightmares, the way the worst memories always knew how to do.]
Mighty long rope, to be trailin' after you all these years.
[It was probably going to get longer, still. These weren't the kinds of moments you ever forgot.]
Flexin my Hosea muscles while bored at work, hmu any time boo
It was a bright, clear morning with the smell of fresh snow drifting down from the Grizzlies' icy caps. Camp was in a basin tucked like a belly button in the mountain's waist, a rocky green place with thick trees fit for obscuring the gaggle of hands, hooves and cloth that was the Van der Linde gang.
Hosea, having slept in his heavy coat, ruffled out of it now and creaked down by a small bed of embers at the edge of camp to heat water for coffee. It was early enough that the drunks were still sweatily sleeping it off, the boys too bruised and tired to be a part of this world, and the women would be up in another half hour to start churning some life out of the whole group.
The old man sat by a tent pitched furthest from that of the gang's leader, looking down at a break in the trees where the long stretch of mountainside rolled out into a green sea of grass. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and the sleep from his eyes and poured bitter coffee into the old machine while the sun peeked over the mountain's shoulder and slowly turned the waving sea to gold.
"It's almost enough to make all the rock mattresses in the world worth it," he said to the tent, the woman and the boy wrapped up in some dowager's afghan. Sitting by the fire with his coat pooled over his twiggy legs, Hosea almost looked like a sultan of old wound up in silks and seated on a velvet cushion. But what sultan ever had to stitch his shirt cuff back on with butcher's twine?
Edited (forgot I actually have icons thanks to Atown) 2025-03-18 15:49 (UTC)
Abigail had been awake for some minutes by the time she hears the rustling of Hosea settling outside her tent, reluctant to leave the warmth she and Jack had made for themselves before she had to, the boy tucked against her chest and beneath her chin, still fast asleep. It wouldn't be too long before she rose with the other girls and started doing her part— more than, to be perfectly honest— to get camp up and running for the day, and while she was at least partly inclined to stay precisely where she was until then, the promise of good company and that first cup of coffee were enough to stir her.
She slowly props herself up with one hand, having slept in her own oversized coat to keep the worst of the chill at bay, her hair unkempt with bits having slipped out of the neat braid she always wound it into to sleep. She takes care to tuck the afghan snugly around Jack, intent on letting him sleep a bit longer, crawling towards the entrance to the tent and pushing one flap open just enough to poke her head out and find Hosea sitting exactly where she'd known he would be. She gives him a fond smile, rubbing some of the sleep from her own eyes with two fingers before she pushes her way to her feet and leaves the tent behind, pulling her coat closed in front of her.
"Ain't never gonna hear me complaining about the scenery," she tells him, matter-of-fact despite having to stifle a yawn halfway through. "Mornin', sir."
daughter!!, enjoy this description of my fave coffee drinking experience
"Good morning, sweetheart." The tin pot clatters on the lip of the tin mug and steaming black coffee pours out of the spigot. Hosea hands it up to Abigail, the warm little mug promising the rush of pure heat blooming through her with that first sip on such a cold morning. He sets the pot back onto the flat rock sitting over the bed of coals after refilling his own mug. He speaks after a sip and a crisp sigh. "You two sleep alright? Our Jack's still in the Land of Nod?"
Edited (Again I always forget I have FACES now) 2025-03-20 15:04 (UTC)
Her smile pulls wryly to one side as she takes the offered mug, her fingers curling around it instinctively, tips seeking that familiar heat that always makes even the coldest mornings a little bit brighter. She tips her head towards him in a nod of thanks before taking a moment to enjoy that first sip, savoring before letting out a satisfied exhale of breath.
"Oh, well as can be expected— we can make ourselves comfortable just about anywhere," she assures him, glancing back towards where she'd left her son bundled up. "Figured I'd let 'im sleep a bit more while he can. Got a busy day ahead, as always."
Set my book down in the middle of a sentence when I remembered I get to talk to my daughter
Hosea rests his tin mug on the edge of the fire and lets out a 'harrumph,' putting one hand to his lumbar at the mention of being comfortable anywhere.
"Seems to me I was supposed to hang up my busy days about ten years back," He says, sliding elegantly into his complaint like a gorgeous silvery salmon swimming upstream. "I recall something about Dutch meaning to put me up in a grand old house with a view of a lake, and that that dog what feeds at the scrap heap should be bringing me my slippers and paper in the morning. Too bad, I think that plan fell right out of Dutch's brains."
He blinks slowly, his grimace at life and age and his partner inevitably turning into a crooked smile at Abigail. She has, of course, heard this and an encyclopedia's worth of other complaints before.
"But today ought to be a fine one. The boys are going off to do something or other, with luck they'll come back with no one shot. And that leaves the rest of us to go into town and see what hay we can make." And what, of anything not nailed down, they can take.
"You make sure you remind him what you're owed," she says matter-of-factly before helping herself to another sip, closing her eyes for a brief moment as it makes its way down.
It's a complaint she's heard countless times, almost word-for-word; she could recite it back to him with at least half a dozen others at the drop of a hat if she had the mind to, but it draws an affectionate smile from her rather than ire— for as unpredictable as their lives could be, there were bits of familiarity here and there that she took comfort in, reminders of why these folks had become home to her in the first place. Hosea so happened to be a big part of that.
"Most of y'all, anyway. I'll be here makin' sure y'all have mended britches to come home to. You got anything else that needs to be thrown on the pile, make sure to leave it with me before you head out, you hear? I'll see to it right away— seniority and all," she goes on to advise him with a smirk.
Then some of those boys are sure as hell lookin to get you in trouble, because they're gettin' awful specific! Not just me, of course, and I ain't ashamed of what I've done to survive, but they're disrespecting every girl in this place.
They look to you as an example, for some god forsaken reason! And just cause they don't say they mind, don't mean don't. Not like any one of us wanna risk our place here.
[It's different for them than it is for the menfolk.]
So next time one of these idiots comes around askin' how I'd like to give Jack a little brother, you're just fine with that? I can take care of myself, but it's principle, John.
Vasilka rode into camp at Clemens Point on her little donkey, its saddlebags laden with necessities, and perhaps a few things that weren't. But she hoped these small tokens would be appreciated by their intended recipients.
She waved to one of the guards as she passed by and made her way to the hitching post, where she dismounted and tied the lead to one of the wooden bars. The little donkey heaved a sigh and shook its head, eying the other horses hitched nearby.
"You behave yourself, Bustle." Vasilka grinned and patted its shoulder. "You're a guest here, so mind your manners."
Satisfied, the donkey lowered its head and began to graze while Vasilka rummaged through one of the saddlebags, pulling out a small assortment of books wrapped in butcher paper, along with a few other items. She scanned the premises as the smell of coffee and venison stew wafted through the humid air, reminding her that she'd skipped a hearty breakfast that morning in the vain hope that she might catch sight of Arthur before he left camp for another job.
Well, so much for that. Vasilka tried to temper her disappointment as she made her way further into the encampment, nodding to the various inhabitants milling about, performing chores or simply lazing about. Professor Dekarios was conspicuously missing among the lot. Vasilka pursed her lips, wondering if he had also left for the day.
She spied Abigail near her tent, huddled in a blessed bit of shade while she worked on her mending. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid, her forehead glistening with a sheen of sweat. Even sewing seemed too strenuous a task in this infernal heat!
Vasilka made her way over and stood at a polite distance, as if she were greeting Abigail on her front porch and not just a bare patch of ground in front of her tent.
"Hello, Abigail," she said, adjusting the parcels within her arms. "Sorry to bother you, but do you know if the professor is here at the moment? I have those journals he requested, and I wanted to make sure he got them."
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There were the obvious stones in the road - obvious to him, if not Abigail. He'd learned some things since Clemens Point. He was ready to try and steer around them now, if that was what better would take.
Tonight is not a stone in the road. It is no jagged tooth that John can see coming. This is something common, but hidden; a rattlesnake in the grass that he'd learned to live with, sounding its tail.
John still feels the shaggy rope around his neck as he bursts back into consciousness, shooting upright from the hard floorboards as his heart pounds in his ears. He grabs for it at his throat, rolling over to his elbows. His lungs still feel hungry, his throat still burns. Normally, this would be where such an episode started, and ended; he would hold his head between his shoulders until his breathing calmed and the phantoms in the dark evaporated.
Normally, he didn't lift his head to see his son's round and frightened eyes staring back at him from the darkness.
His blood turns to rain, and the air in the room thins uncomfortably. The bed rustles behind him, and John has had all that he can take. ]
Stay here.
[ Murmured under his breath as he climbs to his feet and quickly removes himself from the room, seeking the staircase in his haze. He feels the splintering handrail under his fingers and stairs passing too quickly beneath his feet, and then he's outside, the air thick and hot and filled with buzzing insects and croaking bullfrogs. John picks a direction and walks, quickly. ]
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John is already halfway out the door by the time she comes to enough to call out after him, voice low, a soft creak to it thanks to the night's disuse.]
John?
[She furrows her brow in his wake, then gently smooths Jack's hair back from his forehead so that she can press a kiss against his temple, shushing him softly as she sits up and tucks him snugly into their shared blankets.]
Back to sleep, darlin'. I'll be right back.
[Still half-asleep, Jack doesn't have enough fight in him to protest; he grabs at her wrist as she stands, but his tiny hand quickly falls away, too tired to put forth much effort. Abigail watches for a moment to see that he's settled before she reaches for her shawl, pulling it around her shoulders as she slips out of their room and quietly closes the door behind her.
No sign of John, but it's not hard to guess where he'd gone; she hears the front door open and shut and takes the stairs at a brisk pace. A moment later and she's outside, as well; nightfall hasn't done much to break the day's heat, not in these parts, and she pads through the grass barefoot as her gaze searches for him, spotting him in the distance, her pace quickening.]
John!
['Stay here,' he'd said. She's long been a selective listener.]
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Had he still been quartered by himself, this was where his evening would go; he would pace like this in the dead of night until the swell of his thoughts once again obeyed their banks and quieted, at least somewhat. Once that happened, John would naturally drink himself back to sleep, and the colours of that day - the rope at his neck - would once again fade until they didn't anymore.
This would not be the first time someone found him in a state. He could tell from voice and tone alone that it could be the first time it didn't mean a few dark hours spent in awkward, companionable silence.
John slows, and instead of turning to face her, turns sharply away. ]
Go back inside.
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Not without you.
[Her tone is almost scolding, but not quite. Here, when it's just them, she wears her concern plainly, out in the open.]
Don't think I missed that somethin' ain't right.
[Her voice softens slightly, and she reaches out to gently catch one of his arms from behind.]
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It's ripped from her just as soon with force that staggers John, shoves him away from the old tree and its burls, and sends him into a clumsy spin, wheeling him around to face her fully with his hunted posture. His unguarded, frightened, bright eyes. The rapid rise and fall of his shoulders and his hot breath in the night.
A flash of the truth. John had a fallback normally, when this much of him was melted down and reduced, when the core of him almost had air. He knew how and when to push people away. Threats and shouting and piss and vinegar usually did the trick. If it had been one of the guys, he might have swung. John Marston is still figuring out what better looks like. He knows it doesn't smell like piss or vinegar.
The problem is that he has no other cover to hide beneath. With no cudgel to grab, there's nothing else to stand between Abigail and this half-second look at what he tried to hide. ]
I just--
[ Some kind of shell begins to grow over it again; he firms himself up, his face hardens, he makes a pathetic retreat further behind the tree to smear his eyes against his arm. ]
I just need a damn minute. [ He drops here, once the tree stands between him and the Belle, and presses his back against its hard bark. ] I ain't goin' nowhere. Go back in with the boy.
[ The last thing anybody needs is Jack following them out into the night and stepping on a cottonmouth, or wandering too close to the marshy creeks, or eavesdropping from the balcony. John exhales as he wrangles his breathing to a manageable measure, and lowly, adds; ]
Please.
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It's gone almost as soon as it appears, but he's deliberate in putting the tree between them, and she doesn't miss the way he drags his arms across his eyes. She doesn't miss the effort to stay as close to steady as he can manage in his voice, and it breaks her damn heart.]
He'll be fine. I told him to stay put and go back to sleep. He won't follow— he's a good boy.
[Better at listening and taking direction than she's ever been.
"Please."
She can't see his face when he says it, but she doesn't need to. Something wells up in her throat, empathy making her chest feel tight as though she could take on whatever pain he's feeling for herself— that part of her that loves him so damn much that she'd never been able to stay angry or move on, no matter how she might have tried, no matter how he might have insisted she should.]
John.
[She says his name again, softer now, but no less stubborn. She sounds closer, but she allows the tree to remain between them.]
You can take as many minutes as you want, but you could let me help you. You don't gotta do everything by yourself. It ain't supposed to be that way anymore.
[Fool of a man.]
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He presses his fingers hard through his hair, hangs his head between his shoulders. He swallows it back - but it takes some effort. That isn't better. He's wounded, there's an arrow in his leg - but she doesn't know any better when she offers to yank it out. It's not Abigail's fault she can't feel what her idea of help would do to him. ]
You can't. [ A sharp-edged smile that fails to touch his eyes can be heard in his voice, in the dry and humourless chuckle that follows at the mere idea, of being helped, ] Not unless you can make what happened--
[ Make it what, John? Go away, probably. Save him the trouble of running from it. The smile dies, and he lets the colony of frogs fill the silence.
Well, she doesn't understand. Maybe that's the problem. Once she knows, then she could stop asking - realize just how far out of her depth she was wading, that she really couldn't help. Maybe she'd see why he never wanted to agree to better. Maybe it'd be her and Jack gone for a year instead, to find some more suitable father for the boy. The magic trick would be over, and Abigail might see for the first time the gulf that laid between the man she thought she saw in him and what he really was. They could part calmly, and they would be a nice-while-it-lasted forever. It'd be for the best. Better, maybe, looked like this.
And, really, facing down that future is much simpler when he can just stare at the dirt between his feet and feel the old tree standing between the two of them while he talks. John swallows. ]
I, ah... I dunno what all them told you about me. About how I ended up here, ridin' with them.
[ He's sure Arthur hasn't. He's never seemed to like talking about it much more than John himself has - and, in the time of his absence, he can imagine his brother set himself to putting anything that risked sympathy out of his mind where John was concerned. Dutch, he thinks, wouldn't much care to - John can't imagine he speaks much with Abigail now that she's not working anymore. Hosea likely didn't consider it polite conversation for a lady. ]
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She's never looked at anyone else in camp the way she looks at him, even at the worst of times.]
Nothin' much.
[She'd asked about him plenty when she was still a fresh face in the camp, curious to learn more about him when he'd been so unwilling to let himself be known, and she'd gotten all kinds of answers about who he was in the present— but never how he'd got there.
Everyone in this camp had stories. It really ought to be up to each and every one of them if they wanted to share.]
Just knew you'd been ridin' with them a long time. Anything else was your own business. Figured if it was somethin' you thought I needed to know, you'd tell me.
[It wasn't like she didn't have her own story about how she'd found her way to them that she didn't particularly care to revisit.]
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[ No, he doesn't think. He knows. Of all the things in his life, this is the one he knows best. There were precious few points of absolute consistency in his life, and the day Dutch van der Linde found him is one of them. But, John hopes, if he keeps speaking these lapses of memory into existence, then the day may come where he no longer needs to.
So he doesn't particularly want to revisit it. Every time he's been taken back to this point in his personal history has been against his own will, through dreams, or the image of hangings done, or from the full-body startle a rough hand yanking him around can sometimes inspire. Or more recently, wet-rat gunslingers trying to remind him of where he'd come from when he finds his mouth outpacing his good senses of discretion, and he dares to question the heading they all walk beneath. He saved us had started to turn into He saved you, as though daring to expect better of the man who had changed the miserable trajectory of his life were some unspeakable sin.
Unfortunately, John has already tied himself to a horse called Better. It's determined to drag him galloping down this unkempt road until it beats him bloody.
John pulls his hands out of his hair and down his face, drives the grime into his skin, and exhales harshly as he stares it down. ]
They was hangin' me. Homesteaders up in Illinois, or somewhere.
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Part of her had probably thought the outlaw life romantic back then, damn foolish though it was, but what other place was there for folk like them?
He says it like he doesn't know for sure— how old he'd been, where it had happened, but she knows better. A body doesn't forget a thing like that. There are moments that never leave you, haunt you your whole damn life. Being hanged has to be one of them.
She wants to reach out to him. She starts to, catching herself and curling her fingers tightly into the skirt of her nightdress instead, staying her hand. The next words come low and quiet, her brow furrowed as a number of emotions begin to war with one another, each fighting to come out on top. She finds herself caught somewhere between anger and heartache.]
What could a twelve year old boy do worthy of a hangin'?
[Nothin'. Not a damn thing. There's no answer anyone could give that she would consider good enough reason.]
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The reality was that he'd done his share by then, and the hanging wasn't the only memory that hounded him. That particular sin hadn't been what the homesteaders were pulling him up for, but he'd feared that the Lord would descend from Heaven and strike him down even before the noose had touched his skinny neck. He remembers too vividly the pounded-in throb in his face, tossing the stolen gun in black creek-water. Curling up in his trash-heap and crying until morning for the sick twist in his gut.
His honesty could take a more vague form this evening, while he's indulging it. Instead; ]
I can think of a couple things. [ John sniffs. ] Weren't any of them what I got a noose for, though. They caught me rustlin' chickens, stealin' crops.
[ He pauses, lets the crime hang a moment in the air. ]
I was hungry.
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It may have been a crime, but not one worthy of a noose. She'd been hungry. Some part of her had once wanted to believe that there were some people out there who might take pity on a child in such a situation, maybe show some kindness and send them on their way with a stern warning and maybe even some table scraps, but that sort of kindness had never been her experience. It shouldn't come as a surprise that John had never known it, either— but it hurts to hear it for certain all the same.]
That ain't worth hangin' for.
[There's a strange, hard-edged note in her voice, a quieter kind of anger than the temper she usually put on display, fire still burning hot beneath it.]
Anyone who can condemn another human bein' for just trying to stay alive... guess all those people are the sort what never felt real hunger in their damn lives.
[A pause, just for a moment, and she purses her lips, studying his face again.]
You've been dreamin' about it?
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[ And that had been that. There was the farmers, the parasite they'd found in their chicken coop, and the noose in their hands. In their eyes, he's sure, he wasn't any different from a hungry rat in their grain silo. Letting him go wouldn't have put food back on their table - and John remembers his gnawing hunger being fierce enough to consume any sternly-delivered warning. They'd have had to kill him to stop him from taking what he'd needed. They'd probably learned that some time before John started targeting their fields.
Had that been what John had been dreaming about? Yes and no. For his whole life, and not at all. He feels Abigail observing him, but doesn't glance over. He angles his face away, gently, fingers restless on the sleeve of his bedclothes. ]
They caught me in them coops at sundown - two big fellers. Grabbed me and beat my little ass to shit. Even if I hadn't been starved... I remember kickin', swingin', bitin' when I could. Spittin'. Tryin' anything I could to get away. Ain't mattered none to them farmers, twice my size. They pulled my hands behind my back--
[ Tied them, he skips over, crushed them together in rope until it felt like his thin wristbones were scraping against one another in his arms. John's fingers twitch inward against the fabric of his sleeve. ]
Put me on this big bastard workhorse with the rope at my neck. Felt like I was ridin' a mountain. My legs never been split so wide. Feller who was holdin' the straight end twisted his hands around it with this smile.
[ There are pieces he's sure are exaggerated by his child-mind, reflected in even further nightmarish proportion in his own psyche. This, though, remains consistent. ]
You're goin' on a ride, boy.
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She steps forward at last, steadily cautious in her approach as she rounds what of the tree remains between them, sinking to the ground to sit beside him, the grass cool against the worn fabric of her nightgown.
He hasn't been able to look at her for a minute, she'd noted. Her gaze lands on his restless fingers, and she wants to take his hand, to put her arms around him, anything at all— she doesn't know what good any of it would do, but she wants to be able to offer him comfort so badly, to do anything that might make him feel just the tiniest bit at ease, more like himself.
She settles for bringing her hand to rest lightly above his knee, a cautious reassurance.]
Some things... they never leave you, do they.
[She can't pretend to understand exactly what he must feel, but she knows what it is to be haunted. There were a million other lost souls out there just like them, who had no one, who hadn't been lucky enough to survive by the skin of their teeth. John almost hadn't been.]
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Cutting open his chest and letting someone touch the bare wetness of his heart was a frightening ordeal in and of itself. Letting them see his childish nightmares, revealing those puerile fears to the cold open air for mocking voices and prodding fingers - that was uncomfortable enough. Most would think him a weak child for allowing this to dominate his nights. Their stories hadn't been much different, and they hated the reminder nearly as much as John himself did.
Pitying affection was another thing entirely. John's first urge is to pull his leg away, to remove her hand from him. Hands offered to him and pats on the back felt as easy to stomach as glass. He'd take the mockery and gawking over this, but he supposes that's what he signed up for. He's acting like a child - a sniveling, frightened little boy - and he's getting treated like one. He firms himself up and takes a breath. ]
Wasn't no lawman there to save me. Was them three came ridin' in. Dutch, Arthur, Hosea. Wouldn't be here if it weren't for the three of them.
[ Three horseman-shaped smears in a painterly sunset, soaring over the landscape, just before the horse surged out from underneath him and he was left to drop and choke. ]
I saw 'em ridin' up, but I guess... all the people came out to watch me die. Couldn't imagine anyone would be comin' to help.
[ Something else that had hung from him since that day; the number of people scared from their farm shacks to watch the hanging. Women abandoning dinner, hand in hand with their own children. All of the troubles they had pinned to the breath of an underfed, underhoused, underwashed boy. They must have thought they would kill all of their problems with him.
And, as the memory comes back to him, in the frogsong and the splashing of the marshland around them, John snorts. Even as that long-ago rope tightens around his throat ]
You believe the first thing I heard from 'em was Dutch?
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Her hand remains precisely where it is, for now, and that snort of his causes one corner of her mouth to give the slightest twitch.]
I believe it. Likes to make an entrance, don't he?
[She'd already known they owed Dutch their very lives, but not necessarily how very literal that had been for John.]
I see why they never told me. Ain't their story to tell.
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[ This stands more chance of loosening the phantom noose around his neck than addressing the seriousness of what he'd just imparted, one of the few details from that day he could pull into gallows humor. John snorts again, descending for a moment into rare and wheezing laughter, before trying again; ]
You know how he talks? The way his voice is - good and steady and low when he's quiet, but then when he gets loud-- all honkin' and goose-like?
[ Even as a young man, he had that quality in his voice; passion and emotion riveted it until it cracked. ]
Feller whacked the horse so it ran out from under me, and I dropped, and I heard-- [ Stand by, his own voice is breaking up into wheezing and laughter, ] I heard him, honkin' away: 'Arthur, they're hangin' the boy! Arthur, they're hangin' him!'
[ This dark and idle amusement of John's probably wasn't anything funny to Abigail, this memory-relic from a time in which Dutch put John's life above his own means, this glimpse at a younger time. But it's honest - as honest as the quiet, thin, wheezing laugh John has for it. Dutch had always been a man with a penchant for flair and showmanship, but there had been none to be had for him that day. Their intervention hadn't been about a show; it had been about doing the right thing. ]
Well, anyhow. Next thing I knew, I was on Arthur's horse. He was yankin' the noose loose. I heard him all around me - 'I got 'im, Dutch,' - and I guess there was some gunfight over it. I don't remember that so well. But I been ridin' with them three ever since.
[ He hadn't been able to imagine a life where he hadn't ridden with them. Likely because, he thinks, there wouldn't be one. He'd have died tied to that tree. ]
That ain't always how it goes when I dream it.
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The story, the finer details of it— none of it is a laughin' matter, but she she can almost hear Dutch for herself, the way he is when he raises his voice, when he's all stirred up about something. Honkin' really did sum it up nicely.
She's always known that the relationship Arthur and John had with the gang's co-founders was different from the rest; there'd never been any doubt that it was familial, even if she hadn't known the details of how John came to be there. Never seemed to matter much. Loyalty mattered to him, and that feeling ran deep. She'd always liked that about him, too.
She's laughing with him now, softly; it's good to hear him laugh like this, enough so that it eases her anxiety ever so slightly.]
Can see why you would, after all that.
[She knows he owes his life to Dutch. In a way, so does she— though not so directly. He's done a lot for them over the years.
She removes her hand from his knee, gently taking one of his own hands between both of hers without looking down. Instead, she keeps her gaze fixed on him, and there's no pity in it, but understanding, patience. For all the barbs they might exchange in mixed company, her thorns are nowhere to be found now.]
Dreams play tricks sometimes. Try to fool us into thinking we never escape our worst memories. Got more power over us than they oughta, feels like. Don't seem fair, does it? Can't fight back when we're asleep.
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The moment dies, of course. It always does. The only difference is that John hadn't been the one to kill it this time, not with some out-of-line comment or snippy remark. It isn't John that comes to defense of himself. It's the simple reminder that light peal of laughter pinning beneath his own deals him, the reminder that he's not alone in this moment. He's leading Abigail through it, sharing in that private and grim amusement he'd taken with him through the years, and she is partaking in it, with no thorniness or reprisal. Something in his chest withers in response, and he feels its legs break beneath him.
He can't find or name what just died. That doesn't stop him from mourning it, from touching the new hollow in his chest and feeling heavy regret sink his gut.
Maybe he could perform an autopsy on this fresh carcass he's carrying inside of himself later. If he's lucky, he could find a sober and dark corner to brood in and be left alone, and he could identify what he wanted to participate in - what had been taken from him in that moment, who took it, and what poison they had used. Why he felt, at once, exposed and alone - relieved and horribly sad. But not now. This particular sober corner is already reserved for Better, and that's what he's going to try to do. Even as his entire body compels him to stand and leave her here to this tree. John, silent, rubs at his forearms and looks up at the tree branches.
They could have held his weight, he thinks. ]
It always goes wrong. They don't come sometimes, or they're-- [ The words stick in his throat, ] --watchin', or... sometimes it's like the horse is the rope, and it takes off with me draggin' behind, and they never get me.
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All them what-ifs.
[What-ifs and impossibilities, a memory twisted up into countless nightmares, the way the worst memories always knew how to do.]
Mighty long rope, to be trailin' after you all these years.
[It was probably going to get longer, still. These weren't the kinds of moments you ever forgot.]
Flexin my Hosea muscles while bored at work, hmu any time boo
Hosea, having slept in his heavy coat, ruffled out of it now and creaked down by a small bed of embers at the edge of camp to heat water for coffee. It was early enough that the drunks were still sweatily sleeping it off, the boys too bruised and tired to be a part of this world, and the women would be up in another half hour to start churning some life out of the whole group.
The old man sat by a tent pitched furthest from that of the gang's leader, looking down at a break in the trees where the long stretch of mountainside rolled out into a green sea of grass. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and the sleep from his eyes and poured bitter coffee into the old machine while the sun peeked over the mountain's shoulder and slowly turned the waving sea to gold.
"It's almost enough to make all the rock mattresses in the world worth it," he said to the tent, the woman and the boy wrapped up in some dowager's afghan. Sitting by the fire with his coat pooled over his twiggy legs, Hosea almost looked like a sultan of old wound up in silks and seated on a velvet cushion. But what sultan ever had to stitch his shirt cuff back on with butcher's twine?
dad!!
She slowly props herself up with one hand, having slept in her own oversized coat to keep the worst of the chill at bay, her hair unkempt with bits having slipped out of the neat braid she always wound it into to sleep. She takes care to tuck the afghan snugly around Jack, intent on letting him sleep a bit longer, crawling towards the entrance to the tent and pushing one flap open just enough to poke her head out and find Hosea sitting exactly where she'd known he would be. She gives him a fond smile, rubbing some of the sleep from her own eyes with two fingers before she pushes her way to her feet and leaves the tent behind, pulling her coat closed in front of her.
"Ain't never gonna hear me complaining about the scenery," she tells him, matter-of-fact despite having to stifle a yawn halfway through. "Mornin', sir."
daughter!!, enjoy this description of my fave coffee drinking experience
it speaks to my heart
"Oh, well as can be expected— we can make ourselves comfortable just about anywhere," she assures him, glancing back towards where she'd left her son bundled up. "Figured I'd let 'im sleep a bit more while he can. Got a busy day ahead, as always."
Set my book down in the middle of a sentence when I remembered I get to talk to my daughter
"Seems to me I was supposed to hang up my busy days about ten years back," He says, sliding elegantly into his complaint like a gorgeous silvery salmon swimming upstream. "I recall something about Dutch meaning to put me up in a grand old house with a view of a lake, and that that dog what feeds at the scrap heap should be bringing me my slippers and paper in the morning. Too bad, I think that plan fell right out of Dutch's brains."
He blinks slowly, his grimace at life and age and his partner inevitably turning into a crooked smile at Abigail. She has, of course, heard this and an encyclopedia's worth of other complaints before.
"But today ought to be a fine one. The boys are going off to do something or other, with luck they'll come back with no one shot. And that leaves the rest of us to go into town and see what hay we can make." And what, of anything not nailed down, they can take.
what an honor!!
It's a complaint she's heard countless times, almost word-for-word; she could recite it back to him with at least half a dozen others at the drop of a hat if she had the mind to, but it draws an affectionate smile from her rather than ire— for as unpredictable as their lives could be, there were bits of familiarity here and there that she took comfort in, reminders of why these folks had become home to her in the first place. Hosea so happened to be a big part of that.
"Most of y'all, anyway. I'll be here makin' sure y'all have mended britches to come home to. You got anything else that needs to be thrown on the pile, make sure to leave it with me before you head out, you hear? I'll see to it right away— seniority and all," she goes on to advise him with a smirk.
tfln overflows
@ imperdonado
Then some of those boys are sure as hell lookin to get you in trouble, because they're gettin' awful specific! Not just me, of course, and I ain't ashamed of what I've done to survive, but they're disrespecting every girl in this place.
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none of this is my damn problem
aint like them girls ever minded
[ something something excuses ]
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[It's different for them than it is for the menfolk.]
So next time one of these idiots comes around askin' how I'd like to give Jack a little brother, you're just fine with that? I can take care of myself, but it's principle, John.
@ cervid
[She knows how you fellas operate around here.]
Think you'd miss us if you tried. Suit yourself, see how long that lasts. Who else is gonna darn your socks when you wear another set of holes in em?
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just rolls with modern AU shit I dunno
we do what we want
[Others would probably have food that was actually edible, so this isn't much better.]
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[It's. The kindest way to put it.]
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[Look. She knows.]
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Damn, Abigail, you don't gotta remind me that he suffers through them too
[...I mean if she makes fun of herself first, it's fine.]
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She waved to one of the guards as she passed by and made her way to the hitching post, where she dismounted and tied the lead to one of the wooden bars. The little donkey heaved a sigh and shook its head, eying the other horses hitched nearby.
"You behave yourself, Bustle." Vasilka grinned and patted its shoulder. "You're a guest here, so mind your manners."
Satisfied, the donkey lowered its head and began to graze while Vasilka rummaged through one of the saddlebags, pulling out a small assortment of books wrapped in butcher paper, along with a few other items. She scanned the premises as the smell of coffee and venison stew wafted through the humid air, reminding her that she'd skipped a hearty breakfast that morning in the vain hope that she might catch sight of Arthur before he left camp for another job.
Well, so much for that. Vasilka tried to temper her disappointment as she made her way further into the encampment, nodding to the various inhabitants milling about, performing chores or simply lazing about. Professor Dekarios was conspicuously missing among the lot. Vasilka pursed her lips, wondering if he had also left for the day.
She spied Abigail near her tent, huddled in a blessed bit of shade while she worked on her mending. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid, her forehead glistening with a sheen of sweat. Even sewing seemed too strenuous a task in this infernal heat!
Vasilka made her way over and stood at a polite distance, as if she were greeting Abigail on her front porch and not just a bare patch of ground in front of her tent.
"Hello, Abigail," she said, adjusting the parcels within her arms. "Sorry to bother you, but do you know if the professor is here at the moment? I have those journals he requested, and I wanted to make sure he got them."