[ 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.]
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no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
[ 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.
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]