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seriousficTitle: Some roads only go one way
Fandom: Cowboys & Aliens
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,179
Characters/Pairings: Jake/Ella
Summary: Jake Lonergan can't forget what he doesn't remember.
It takes Jake a month to fix the hole in his damn roof. He dawdles and goes into town and sleeps outside, in the cold and the dark, because to cover the whole thing up feels like he's denying it happened. Alice, the robbery, the demons, everything. But little by little he goes about fixing it, until one night the rain comes down through the hole, shooting cold all through his little cabin, and he's always felt cold lying in that bed alone, so that tears it. In the blinding rain he throws up the ladder and climbs onto the roof like a madman, nearly breaking his neck a half dozen times before he's finished, but when he goes back inside the rain is just a steady dripping onto the rug. He puts a bucket under it and calls it a night.
With one match, the fireplace goes up like it was soaked in lantern oil, and he pulls his chair right up next to it, letting the heat send the raindrops on him scurrying. He remembers something else about Alice—this joke she kept trying to tell but could never get right. It started off 'two Mexicans are planning to rob a train,' but then she never could seem to remember if they went to buy a mule or dig a hole to bury the gold.
Lightning strikes nearby, over and over, spooking his horse. Even from inside he hears it rearing up and whinnying. He pulls his blanket tighter around him. No way he's going back out there. Probably got himself pneumonia already.
Then the fire goes funny, sparks spitting out into his lap, embers rolling around. He gets up, backs away, grabs his gun because he just kinda likes having it in his grip. Then a hand reaches out of the fireplace.
Jake nearly shoots himself in the foot before he grabs hold and pulls Ella out. She's hot to the touch, the heat sizzling against his damp skin, but finally she's fully there, sprawled out on the rug. He hands her the blanket.
"Took you long enough," he says.
***
She drinks out of the bucket and practically inhales the mashed potatoes he offers her. He baked too much anyway—didn't remember the recipe was for two. Then she dips her hand into the rainwater and wipes absently at her face. There's still some soot on her cheek.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to reconstitute myself. It takes longer when I'm… spread out."
"I wasn't worried," he lies.
"Are they gone?" Her voice is suddenly stringent.
"Yeah. We checked those caverns top to bottom. Not one of them's left."
"Good." She brings her hand down from her face and wipes it together with her other one, smearing ashes between them.
There's still a little speck of soot on her ear, which he tries to ignore. "So you'll be moving on then?"
"Did you?" She smiles at his reaction, which he can't quite hide. "It was a one-way trip getting here. Your people won't have the resources to send me anywhere else for hundreds of years. Besides, I have to be ready in case they come back."
"Then I guess you'll stuck here for the duration." He gets up. It's late, he's tired, and she's most likely tired too. Jake's heard of the expression 'I'll sleep when I'm dead,' but since Ella didn't, she could probably use a nap as well. "There's a soft chair in the other room. It's comfortable enough, if you sleep."
"I sleep," she confirms. "Lying down, even."
He goes to bed.
***
He's dreaming of Alice again. She's in Dolarhyde's stagecoach, he's riding alongside, and she's trying to tell him they don't have any money but he just keeps pointing the Colt at her and telling her it's a robbery.
When he wakes up, he finds Ella has gotten into Alice's things. She's laid some clothes out on the table, clearly to her liking. She looks at him, a tad ridiculous in the blanket with those long legs poking out the end.
"These would fit me," she says. "If you don't mind…"
"She's not using 'em."
***
Sheriff Taggart pays him a visit, says they heard the Black Pike Gang is headed for town and they could use him in the posse. Reward money will keep him in coffee and flapjacks for a good few months. Jake straps on his gunbelt and figures out that's what was missing, why he was feeling so naked at times.
"Ma'am," Taggart says, tipping his hat to Ella.
She grabs Jake's back-up piece and climbs onto the horse behind him.
"Not sure she is," Jake replies.
***
The job takes and Jake starts living off of wanted posters instead of being on them. He goes by Breslin. It was Alice's family name and the whole thing's a stupid, sloppy gesture, but he can't shake the habit and he can't call himself Lonergan. That man's still got appointments with the marshal service.
Bounty hunting's a crooked sport. You yank your holster and put men down for a living, only the law says it's alright. That kind of hypocrisy used to bother Jake, but he's alright with it now, or he just doesn't care. It's hard to tell, with his memory still spotty.
Ella tags along, and Jake lets her because she doesn't talk much. They're able to work in sympathy without a lot of chatter, which was always his problem with the old gang, they couldn't shut their yaps worth a damn. She's got her habits, whistling like a bird and seeming to take some satisfaction in hearing her own tune, and he's got his. Well, no he doesn't. Mostly, he just takes care of the horses.
***
One day he finds her staring in the mirror and she's got gray hair, her face lined with wrinkles. It's an odd sight. She's always seemed above the ravages of age, or any other earthly concern.
"Hate to tell you this, but you're aging like a boot left out in the rain."
A moment and she's back to herself. "This body is… like clothes I wear. I can modify it to my needs."
"So you… the real you, any rate… you don't get old?"
"I don't die, why would I get old?"
Jake nods. That makes sense. No, it doesn't, but it'd be rude to point that out. "So you chose to get old?"
"We'd make an odd pair, you getting gray hairs and me looking fresh out of finishing school."
He huffs a laugh. "So you're planning on sticking around?"
"Why would I leave?"
He hasn't even figured out why she's staying.
***
Jake drinks. A lot of men do, but he does it right, knocking back shots like they were bullets in a cylinder. He doesn't even realize he's drunk until Ella is waving off the bartender.
They're in a whorehouse, so if Ella were any proper lady she'd be scandalized, but she actually seems appreciative of the low-cut dresses and garter belts. Probably high fashion where she's from. Jake had thought she just wanted a drink too, but no, she's guarding him like an extra on a wagon train.
"That's half the bounty on the Ape Kid," she says, nodding at the empty shotglasses lined up, headstones in a graveyard.
"You saving up for something?"
"Come on." She tugs on his arm and, yeah, she's stronger than she looks. He goes along. "You've practically given yourself alcohol poisoning."
"The hell's that?"
"It's a thing," she hisses, batting aside hookers so they can get upstairs, pushing him into a bedroom and dropping him on a mattress that smells of cheap perfume and cheaper women. The world had started swirling when Jake got up and it doesn't let up, staying stubbornly out of focus while Ella pulls his boots off.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"I'm doing nothing. You're sleeping it off." She takes his gunbelt too, slinging it over her shoulder and now standing in front of the door. He knows he'll probably wake up to find her in the same spot. "Are all humans so self-destructive?"
"No. Think I'm special." He flopped his head back and felt the stiff bed resist his weight. The ceiling was familiar. The patterns of vines and flowers—he must've spent hours in a bed like this one, Alice against him and into him like an opiate. "This was where she worked. This damn whorehouse. I must've visited it a hundred times. I just remembered."
Ella tilts her head oddly, a bit sympathetically, and sits beside him. He can't quite get the hang of lifting his head up, so all he sees is the curve of her back and her unfettered hair. "Everyone else has remembered. It's been months. You should have everything back."
"Well, I don't," he snaps. She's still. Doesn't even wince at his raised voice. He feels like hell, but maybe it's just the whiskey gathering up in his gut. He wouldn't have yelled at Alice. "Maybe it's a blessing. There're things I can do without remembering."
"Alice?"
He groans and she lays down beside him, looking over the raggedy sheets at his face. The cuts and bruises have healed up, but his eyes still have that rattlesnake wariness, like he's just waiting for someone to draw.
"You still have her picture," Ella says. "I've seen you make sure you have it each morning before we leave. But you never look at it."
"How often do you think of your 'people'?" Jake doesn't even know what they look like, what she really looks like. Considering how different a fellow can look if he's just born across a sea, who knows what she is?
"I don't forget. Can't. But I don't have to think about what happened. I find other things to occupy me."
"Like findin' the folks who did it and blowing 'em to hell? You're as messed up as I am. If you're looking to me to tell you why you shouldn't have just stayed as a bunch of… dustbunnies or what have you, I've got no good thing to tell you."
She doesn't respond and he finds himself just looking at her, seeing something enter her eyes and pass through and fade into the corners. He doesn't think of the time she kissed him often, or on purpose, but sometimes it flitters through his mind like a hummingbird. Yeah, stupid metaphor, but that's her all over. Come in, fly around, sing a song, and disappear when your back's turned.
"A lot of my people were like you," she says. "Strong. Fair. Honest. If you'd been born on my world, I think they would've made a hero out of you."
"Doesn't say much for your world."
"Doesn't say much for yours."
***
He keeps drinking, she keeps an eye on him. He tries to ease off the bottle just a little, figuring that one day she might want to buy a pretty dress and be seen by a lucky fellow, and that'd be hard to do if their money's split up to every saloon in the Territories. Mostly, he circles back to Absolution. It's not that he particularly likes the place anymore than most, but he doesn't have to watch his back, or Ella's. The posse might not've told too much about her (who would've believed them?), but folks know she's both odd and harmless.
Besides, if Jake's going to drink, Doc might as well end up with the coin.
He's nursing a hangover when he gets the news. Ella is forcing orange juice down his throat and pickles to go with it, blabbering something about vitamins and replenishing minerals, no wonder her race went extinct, when Percy comes knocking at the door. He's another one who never seemed to come all the way back from hanging in an demonic meat locker, not quite recalling Jake but definitely wary of him. With wide eyes he said that the Sheriff had fallen ill and he'd requested Jake's presence.
Jake and Ella spend what feels like hours waiting outside his bedroom, watching Emmett pace and listening to the Sheriff cough before things seem to settle down and he asks them in.
It's TB. Taggart's laid up in bed, a bloody handkerchief clenched in his hand, and he keeps it pressed to his mouth whenever he's not speaking. Dolarhyde's there, a game of cards laid out on the sheets between him and Taggart. He gets up from his seat, gives the pair a nod that's military in its crispness.
"That's a bad hand of cards," Jake says as he comes in, taking off his hat even though he might need to make a quick exit. You never could tell with lawmen. "Survive an alien invasion, then catch consumption."
"Can't say I'm for it myself," Taggart replies, while Ella lurks near the door. Jake doesn't think she'll ever get comfortable around people who can just break down and stop living. "Ma'am," he acknowledges her.
She nods back. "Sheriff."
"I'm making a one-way trip. You two know that? And this town ain't slowing down for me. Someone's gonna have to keep the peace, keep an eye on the Colonel here."
"Me? I'm harmless as a kitty-cat," Dolarhyde drawls.
"You old goat, I wouldn't trust you far as I could carry you."
Another cough, explosively loud now that Jake's actually in the room with him, and Taggart can't catch it all in his hanky. Blood leaks down his cheek. Dolarhyde mops it up.
"Has to be you, Jake." Taggart's voice is thin and reedy, but sure as ever. "A sheriff has to be good for the good folks and do bad to the bad'uns. That's you."
"I ain't heard a law I liked in my life," Jake said. "I've stolen more gold than I've earned."
"You've spent the last year bringing in lawbreakers. Don't think I ain't been watching. You and that girl, maybe you're good for each other. Pardon my saying so, Ella, I don't mean to embarrass you."
Ella didn't mention that she hadn't been embarrassed when an entire Indian tribe had seen her birthday suit.
"I'm telling you," Jake insisted, "you've got the wrong man."
"Fine. Ella, you lookin' for steady work?"
He took the job. Goddamn Taggart. If he hadn't died a week later, Jake would've thrashed him.
***
Sheriffing is like one of those dreams you have when you eat something your stomach takes exception to. People passing him on the street, tipping their hats to him and his shiny badge—feels unnatural. Ella seems to cotton to the floral dresses from Paris and the wide-brimmed hats coloring her features with shade. Things she can wear when she didn't have to be ready for a quick getaway every moment. Everyone has her as the sheriff's woman, and if she wouldn't dissuade them, Jake didn't see why he had to. Keeps the loose women from treating him as an eligible bachelor, at least. He was old enough to see trouble in any dalliance.
Mostly, he just reads the dime novels the general store has got to stocking or stretches his legs out, either by putting them up on his desk or strolling around Absolution. When the occasional bad number rolls into town, he just stares at them a time, and they're either cowed or realize there's no mischief they can get into with him there. The second option is fine by him. His gun-hand's faster than they'd ever live to be.
Then one day it won't stop pouring in on him. His time with Alice comes back like he's living it all over again. It boils his eyes in their sockets and sets him into a cold sweat and when he staggers into the doctor's office, he would've given his left arm never to have met the woman.
Five minutes and twenty dollars later, he's in his office with a tincture of opium. He has no idea how much he would've taken if Ella hadn't stormed in, grabbed the bottle, and shattered it in his wastebasket.
"Do you have any idea," she starts, angry as he's ever heard her, "what that stuff does to you?"
"Makes your cough go away."
She paces like Emmett had, waiting on his grandfather to die, and sees herself in the mirror as she passes it. Her dainty gloves, her bonnet, her Gibson Girl dress. She rips the gloves off and flings the bonnet away and comes back at him like a prizefighter on his second wind. "What more can I do? Out of all of you, out of every single multicellular lifeform on this middle-of-nowhere planet, I'm here, with you, because I'm your friend. I like you, much as you try to give more ornery than all the buffalo in Indian country. And it's still not worth as much to you as—"
"As a dead whore," he says, because she's actually gotten him kinda curious now. He'd like to know how she talks when she isn’t being mysterious. "You think I like it? Everyone else gets to forget. But she keeps coming back to me. She's been dead for all this time and I just found out the smell of her hair yesterday. I still—she's still there, right now, and I can't—I can't let her go. I have to remember her. I have to remember what it felt like to be someone else, because I'm nothing."
He takes off. He leaves the badge on the desk. He's down the stairs and there's the door and the stables are a step away and he can have the horse saddled in a minute and he can ride wherever he likes. All the wanted posters of Jake Lonergan have crumbled to dust, the reward money got used to put in a fountain somewhere, he's a free man. Not a sheriff or a bounty hunter or an outlaw. Not anything.
"I couldn't forget you," Ella says. She's at the top of the stairs and if he looks back… he's actually a little afraid to look at her. He doesn't know what it would do to him. Maybe he'd see her as she really is. "Like I said, it was a one-way trip. I come here, I stop them—everyone I know is dead, why shouldn't I be? But I was worried about you. I pulled myself together, out of a billion particles so small you wouldn't believe they existed, and wove a body out of elements your greatest scientists haven’t glimpsed yet. I did it for you."
He looks back at her. She's beautiful.
"Goddamn, Jake, I told you I wanted to grow old with you. How obvious does a girl have to be?"
Her kiss is weird, tasting like the air after a lightning strike, but nowhere near unpleasant. He puts his hands on her with an uncouth lack of propriety, but the most she does is jeer at how many layers of clothes turn his touch into a vague sensation. "I can buy more," she says, when he lets go of her mouth to see to her neck, marking that perfect skin like he's apparently always wondered if he can manage, because the moment the thought occurs to him it isn't going anywhere. Then he takes her meaning and leaves her gasping, her neck bruised like she came to him straight from a fight.
Maybe he doesn't know his own strength, maybe women's fashion just isn’t built sturdy as men's, maybe he's just that motivated, but the clothes ripped like they were spun out of cotton candy. Her corsage, her shirtwaist, finally her bustle. Goddamn if he knew why she wore the things instead of a decent set of trousers. He'd had easier times getting into safes.
"Don't buy any more of those," he asks politely, throwing a corset away.
"I was wondering if you'd notice," she replies, maybe actually even nervous, which he didn't know she could do, as she works at his ditto suit. She's better with her hands than he is—she's got all the buttons open almost as soon as she's started, and she doesn't have to rip 'em.
"I noticed it made you look like a steamboat, all laden with flags and pomp." He reaches for her, she pushes his hands away and disassembles his belt buckle.
"You don't like flags?" she asks, throwing his gunbelt across the room like it pissed her off.
"Don't much care for pomp." He wants more of her, needs her with a passion that shocks even him. He didn't know he could want a thing so bad. She's water in the desert, she's a five-card draw in high-stakes poker, she's… Ella.
The name of Alice goes away and she smiles like she can feel it go. "I get seasick." Then she throws him against the bars of the jail cell, the cold iron biting through the thin cloth of his shirt. It's always a surprise to him how strong she is, though it shouldn't be. Not like she's ever struck him as frail.
She kisses him again, her entire body seeming to throw itself behind the act. With jacket, vest, and shirt hanging open he can feel every inch of her chest pressed against his, undulating hypnotically, like she's feeding off something he's giving her. Her hands slap at the bars over him, clenching so tightly he's mildly surprised the iron doesn't give. Then she's lifting herself up onto him and it's all he can do to get himself out into his hand and then into her as she moves desperately over him, taking him inside her with a keening shudder. Her legs he feels clasp around his midsection, the sensation tangling with the itch of his muslin shirt, unbearable when he could be feeling her. He tugs it out and pulls it off and manages to shed most of what he can reach, his hat falling atop the pile by pure coincidence. She makes a noise like a laugh, hard to tell when her face is buried in his hair, and rides him like she's breaking in a horse.
He's trying to take charge, because that's the only way he knows to make her feel good, but she keeps pressing him harder against the bars, her head thrown back now, screaming like an Indian on a warpath. Her breasts are before him, her lips, her throat, every inch of her deserving to be worshipped, but all he can do is stand and stare and try to hold onto her as she fucks him. One hand is on the bars and one is on the cell door, and as she flows away from him only to thrust back against him, her swaying slams the door repeatedly, the noise dominating the room, the monotonous banging louder than her quietly broken climax.
Jake holds out with all his will, but in a few minutes he's forced to let his orgasm take him. Ella seeps into him, the droning of the cell door slowing down until she finally lets it fall shut, her body sagging against his. Her fingers go limp on the cell bars and he's able to pull her away, carrying her to the cot in his office and setting her down there. He's never seen her expression so unguarded, her face so bright and satisfied.
"If I'd known that was all it took, I would've waved my pussy in your face a while ago."
He hitches up his pants and pours himself into his chair. He would pull his hat over his eyes, but it's back with Ella's bustle. "Wasn't that and you know it."
"Yeah. I do."
There's a horse blanket on the floor, he dropped it there when he heard a card game turn to shooting the other day, and she has no shame in pulling it over herself with coquettish half-modesty. Seeing her covered, now all bare shoulders and long legs, he feels his loins go straight back to what they were doing.
He doesn't, though. It somehow seems like that would spoil it, just like Ella making gutter-mouthed jokes.
"What was your world like?"
She starts a little, looking at him with surprise in her eyes. It's an unfamiliar expression on her. She always looks like she's expected every little detail of the day. "I didn't know you cared about that sort of thing." Her lips tensed into a smile. "What was it you said? Goings-on in Mexico concern you more than in Asia, and outer space less than in Asia."
"I didn't say I was studying for a school test." Jake put his boots up, leaning down so he's more on eye level with her. "It's part of you. I'm curious about you. Seems a bit more polite to ask where you're from than who you favor in the White House."
Her smile relaxed a bit. She drifted down to the pillow. "We didn't like talking about politics where I'm from either."
Fandom: Cowboys & Aliens
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,179
Characters/Pairings: Jake/Ella
Summary: Jake Lonergan can't forget what he doesn't remember.
It takes Jake a month to fix the hole in his damn roof. He dawdles and goes into town and sleeps outside, in the cold and the dark, because to cover the whole thing up feels like he's denying it happened. Alice, the robbery, the demons, everything. But little by little he goes about fixing it, until one night the rain comes down through the hole, shooting cold all through his little cabin, and he's always felt cold lying in that bed alone, so that tears it. In the blinding rain he throws up the ladder and climbs onto the roof like a madman, nearly breaking his neck a half dozen times before he's finished, but when he goes back inside the rain is just a steady dripping onto the rug. He puts a bucket under it and calls it a night.
With one match, the fireplace goes up like it was soaked in lantern oil, and he pulls his chair right up next to it, letting the heat send the raindrops on him scurrying. He remembers something else about Alice—this joke she kept trying to tell but could never get right. It started off 'two Mexicans are planning to rob a train,' but then she never could seem to remember if they went to buy a mule or dig a hole to bury the gold.
Lightning strikes nearby, over and over, spooking his horse. Even from inside he hears it rearing up and whinnying. He pulls his blanket tighter around him. No way he's going back out there. Probably got himself pneumonia already.
Then the fire goes funny, sparks spitting out into his lap, embers rolling around. He gets up, backs away, grabs his gun because he just kinda likes having it in his grip. Then a hand reaches out of the fireplace.
Jake nearly shoots himself in the foot before he grabs hold and pulls Ella out. She's hot to the touch, the heat sizzling against his damp skin, but finally she's fully there, sprawled out on the rug. He hands her the blanket.
"Took you long enough," he says.
***
She drinks out of the bucket and practically inhales the mashed potatoes he offers her. He baked too much anyway—didn't remember the recipe was for two. Then she dips her hand into the rainwater and wipes absently at her face. There's still some soot on her cheek.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to reconstitute myself. It takes longer when I'm… spread out."
"I wasn't worried," he lies.
"Are they gone?" Her voice is suddenly stringent.
"Yeah. We checked those caverns top to bottom. Not one of them's left."
"Good." She brings her hand down from her face and wipes it together with her other one, smearing ashes between them.
There's still a little speck of soot on her ear, which he tries to ignore. "So you'll be moving on then?"
"Did you?" She smiles at his reaction, which he can't quite hide. "It was a one-way trip getting here. Your people won't have the resources to send me anywhere else for hundreds of years. Besides, I have to be ready in case they come back."
"Then I guess you'll stuck here for the duration." He gets up. It's late, he's tired, and she's most likely tired too. Jake's heard of the expression 'I'll sleep when I'm dead,' but since Ella didn't, she could probably use a nap as well. "There's a soft chair in the other room. It's comfortable enough, if you sleep."
"I sleep," she confirms. "Lying down, even."
He goes to bed.
***
He's dreaming of Alice again. She's in Dolarhyde's stagecoach, he's riding alongside, and she's trying to tell him they don't have any money but he just keeps pointing the Colt at her and telling her it's a robbery.
When he wakes up, he finds Ella has gotten into Alice's things. She's laid some clothes out on the table, clearly to her liking. She looks at him, a tad ridiculous in the blanket with those long legs poking out the end.
"These would fit me," she says. "If you don't mind…"
"She's not using 'em."
***
Sheriff Taggart pays him a visit, says they heard the Black Pike Gang is headed for town and they could use him in the posse. Reward money will keep him in coffee and flapjacks for a good few months. Jake straps on his gunbelt and figures out that's what was missing, why he was feeling so naked at times.
"Ma'am," Taggart says, tipping his hat to Ella.
She grabs Jake's back-up piece and climbs onto the horse behind him.
"Not sure she is," Jake replies.
***
The job takes and Jake starts living off of wanted posters instead of being on them. He goes by Breslin. It was Alice's family name and the whole thing's a stupid, sloppy gesture, but he can't shake the habit and he can't call himself Lonergan. That man's still got appointments with the marshal service.
Bounty hunting's a crooked sport. You yank your holster and put men down for a living, only the law says it's alright. That kind of hypocrisy used to bother Jake, but he's alright with it now, or he just doesn't care. It's hard to tell, with his memory still spotty.
Ella tags along, and Jake lets her because she doesn't talk much. They're able to work in sympathy without a lot of chatter, which was always his problem with the old gang, they couldn't shut their yaps worth a damn. She's got her habits, whistling like a bird and seeming to take some satisfaction in hearing her own tune, and he's got his. Well, no he doesn't. Mostly, he just takes care of the horses.
***
One day he finds her staring in the mirror and she's got gray hair, her face lined with wrinkles. It's an odd sight. She's always seemed above the ravages of age, or any other earthly concern.
"Hate to tell you this, but you're aging like a boot left out in the rain."
A moment and she's back to herself. "This body is… like clothes I wear. I can modify it to my needs."
"So you… the real you, any rate… you don't get old?"
"I don't die, why would I get old?"
Jake nods. That makes sense. No, it doesn't, but it'd be rude to point that out. "So you chose to get old?"
"We'd make an odd pair, you getting gray hairs and me looking fresh out of finishing school."
He huffs a laugh. "So you're planning on sticking around?"
"Why would I leave?"
He hasn't even figured out why she's staying.
***
Jake drinks. A lot of men do, but he does it right, knocking back shots like they were bullets in a cylinder. He doesn't even realize he's drunk until Ella is waving off the bartender.
They're in a whorehouse, so if Ella were any proper lady she'd be scandalized, but she actually seems appreciative of the low-cut dresses and garter belts. Probably high fashion where she's from. Jake had thought she just wanted a drink too, but no, she's guarding him like an extra on a wagon train.
"That's half the bounty on the Ape Kid," she says, nodding at the empty shotglasses lined up, headstones in a graveyard.
"You saving up for something?"
"Come on." She tugs on his arm and, yeah, she's stronger than she looks. He goes along. "You've practically given yourself alcohol poisoning."
"The hell's that?"
"It's a thing," she hisses, batting aside hookers so they can get upstairs, pushing him into a bedroom and dropping him on a mattress that smells of cheap perfume and cheaper women. The world had started swirling when Jake got up and it doesn't let up, staying stubbornly out of focus while Ella pulls his boots off.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"I'm doing nothing. You're sleeping it off." She takes his gunbelt too, slinging it over her shoulder and now standing in front of the door. He knows he'll probably wake up to find her in the same spot. "Are all humans so self-destructive?"
"No. Think I'm special." He flopped his head back and felt the stiff bed resist his weight. The ceiling was familiar. The patterns of vines and flowers—he must've spent hours in a bed like this one, Alice against him and into him like an opiate. "This was where she worked. This damn whorehouse. I must've visited it a hundred times. I just remembered."
Ella tilts her head oddly, a bit sympathetically, and sits beside him. He can't quite get the hang of lifting his head up, so all he sees is the curve of her back and her unfettered hair. "Everyone else has remembered. It's been months. You should have everything back."
"Well, I don't," he snaps. She's still. Doesn't even wince at his raised voice. He feels like hell, but maybe it's just the whiskey gathering up in his gut. He wouldn't have yelled at Alice. "Maybe it's a blessing. There're things I can do without remembering."
"Alice?"
He groans and she lays down beside him, looking over the raggedy sheets at his face. The cuts and bruises have healed up, but his eyes still have that rattlesnake wariness, like he's just waiting for someone to draw.
"You still have her picture," Ella says. "I've seen you make sure you have it each morning before we leave. But you never look at it."
"How often do you think of your 'people'?" Jake doesn't even know what they look like, what she really looks like. Considering how different a fellow can look if he's just born across a sea, who knows what she is?
"I don't forget. Can't. But I don't have to think about what happened. I find other things to occupy me."
"Like findin' the folks who did it and blowing 'em to hell? You're as messed up as I am. If you're looking to me to tell you why you shouldn't have just stayed as a bunch of… dustbunnies or what have you, I've got no good thing to tell you."
She doesn't respond and he finds himself just looking at her, seeing something enter her eyes and pass through and fade into the corners. He doesn't think of the time she kissed him often, or on purpose, but sometimes it flitters through his mind like a hummingbird. Yeah, stupid metaphor, but that's her all over. Come in, fly around, sing a song, and disappear when your back's turned.
"A lot of my people were like you," she says. "Strong. Fair. Honest. If you'd been born on my world, I think they would've made a hero out of you."
"Doesn't say much for your world."
"Doesn't say much for yours."
***
He keeps drinking, she keeps an eye on him. He tries to ease off the bottle just a little, figuring that one day she might want to buy a pretty dress and be seen by a lucky fellow, and that'd be hard to do if their money's split up to every saloon in the Territories. Mostly, he circles back to Absolution. It's not that he particularly likes the place anymore than most, but he doesn't have to watch his back, or Ella's. The posse might not've told too much about her (who would've believed them?), but folks know she's both odd and harmless.
Besides, if Jake's going to drink, Doc might as well end up with the coin.
He's nursing a hangover when he gets the news. Ella is forcing orange juice down his throat and pickles to go with it, blabbering something about vitamins and replenishing minerals, no wonder her race went extinct, when Percy comes knocking at the door. He's another one who never seemed to come all the way back from hanging in an demonic meat locker, not quite recalling Jake but definitely wary of him. With wide eyes he said that the Sheriff had fallen ill and he'd requested Jake's presence.
Jake and Ella spend what feels like hours waiting outside his bedroom, watching Emmett pace and listening to the Sheriff cough before things seem to settle down and he asks them in.
It's TB. Taggart's laid up in bed, a bloody handkerchief clenched in his hand, and he keeps it pressed to his mouth whenever he's not speaking. Dolarhyde's there, a game of cards laid out on the sheets between him and Taggart. He gets up from his seat, gives the pair a nod that's military in its crispness.
"That's a bad hand of cards," Jake says as he comes in, taking off his hat even though he might need to make a quick exit. You never could tell with lawmen. "Survive an alien invasion, then catch consumption."
"Can't say I'm for it myself," Taggart replies, while Ella lurks near the door. Jake doesn't think she'll ever get comfortable around people who can just break down and stop living. "Ma'am," he acknowledges her.
She nods back. "Sheriff."
"I'm making a one-way trip. You two know that? And this town ain't slowing down for me. Someone's gonna have to keep the peace, keep an eye on the Colonel here."
"Me? I'm harmless as a kitty-cat," Dolarhyde drawls.
"You old goat, I wouldn't trust you far as I could carry you."
Another cough, explosively loud now that Jake's actually in the room with him, and Taggart can't catch it all in his hanky. Blood leaks down his cheek. Dolarhyde mops it up.
"Has to be you, Jake." Taggart's voice is thin and reedy, but sure as ever. "A sheriff has to be good for the good folks and do bad to the bad'uns. That's you."
"I ain't heard a law I liked in my life," Jake said. "I've stolen more gold than I've earned."
"You've spent the last year bringing in lawbreakers. Don't think I ain't been watching. You and that girl, maybe you're good for each other. Pardon my saying so, Ella, I don't mean to embarrass you."
Ella didn't mention that she hadn't been embarrassed when an entire Indian tribe had seen her birthday suit.
"I'm telling you," Jake insisted, "you've got the wrong man."
"Fine. Ella, you lookin' for steady work?"
He took the job. Goddamn Taggart. If he hadn't died a week later, Jake would've thrashed him.
***
Sheriffing is like one of those dreams you have when you eat something your stomach takes exception to. People passing him on the street, tipping their hats to him and his shiny badge—feels unnatural. Ella seems to cotton to the floral dresses from Paris and the wide-brimmed hats coloring her features with shade. Things she can wear when she didn't have to be ready for a quick getaway every moment. Everyone has her as the sheriff's woman, and if she wouldn't dissuade them, Jake didn't see why he had to. Keeps the loose women from treating him as an eligible bachelor, at least. He was old enough to see trouble in any dalliance.
Mostly, he just reads the dime novels the general store has got to stocking or stretches his legs out, either by putting them up on his desk or strolling around Absolution. When the occasional bad number rolls into town, he just stares at them a time, and they're either cowed or realize there's no mischief they can get into with him there. The second option is fine by him. His gun-hand's faster than they'd ever live to be.
Then one day it won't stop pouring in on him. His time with Alice comes back like he's living it all over again. It boils his eyes in their sockets and sets him into a cold sweat and when he staggers into the doctor's office, he would've given his left arm never to have met the woman.
Five minutes and twenty dollars later, he's in his office with a tincture of opium. He has no idea how much he would've taken if Ella hadn't stormed in, grabbed the bottle, and shattered it in his wastebasket.
"Do you have any idea," she starts, angry as he's ever heard her, "what that stuff does to you?"
"Makes your cough go away."
She paces like Emmett had, waiting on his grandfather to die, and sees herself in the mirror as she passes it. Her dainty gloves, her bonnet, her Gibson Girl dress. She rips the gloves off and flings the bonnet away and comes back at him like a prizefighter on his second wind. "What more can I do? Out of all of you, out of every single multicellular lifeform on this middle-of-nowhere planet, I'm here, with you, because I'm your friend. I like you, much as you try to give more ornery than all the buffalo in Indian country. And it's still not worth as much to you as—"
"As a dead whore," he says, because she's actually gotten him kinda curious now. He'd like to know how she talks when she isn’t being mysterious. "You think I like it? Everyone else gets to forget. But she keeps coming back to me. She's been dead for all this time and I just found out the smell of her hair yesterday. I still—she's still there, right now, and I can't—I can't let her go. I have to remember her. I have to remember what it felt like to be someone else, because I'm nothing."
He takes off. He leaves the badge on the desk. He's down the stairs and there's the door and the stables are a step away and he can have the horse saddled in a minute and he can ride wherever he likes. All the wanted posters of Jake Lonergan have crumbled to dust, the reward money got used to put in a fountain somewhere, he's a free man. Not a sheriff or a bounty hunter or an outlaw. Not anything.
"I couldn't forget you," Ella says. She's at the top of the stairs and if he looks back… he's actually a little afraid to look at her. He doesn't know what it would do to him. Maybe he'd see her as she really is. "Like I said, it was a one-way trip. I come here, I stop them—everyone I know is dead, why shouldn't I be? But I was worried about you. I pulled myself together, out of a billion particles so small you wouldn't believe they existed, and wove a body out of elements your greatest scientists haven’t glimpsed yet. I did it for you."
He looks back at her. She's beautiful.
"Goddamn, Jake, I told you I wanted to grow old with you. How obvious does a girl have to be?"
Her kiss is weird, tasting like the air after a lightning strike, but nowhere near unpleasant. He puts his hands on her with an uncouth lack of propriety, but the most she does is jeer at how many layers of clothes turn his touch into a vague sensation. "I can buy more," she says, when he lets go of her mouth to see to her neck, marking that perfect skin like he's apparently always wondered if he can manage, because the moment the thought occurs to him it isn't going anywhere. Then he takes her meaning and leaves her gasping, her neck bruised like she came to him straight from a fight.
Maybe he doesn't know his own strength, maybe women's fashion just isn’t built sturdy as men's, maybe he's just that motivated, but the clothes ripped like they were spun out of cotton candy. Her corsage, her shirtwaist, finally her bustle. Goddamn if he knew why she wore the things instead of a decent set of trousers. He'd had easier times getting into safes.
"Don't buy any more of those," he asks politely, throwing a corset away.
"I was wondering if you'd notice," she replies, maybe actually even nervous, which he didn't know she could do, as she works at his ditto suit. She's better with her hands than he is—she's got all the buttons open almost as soon as she's started, and she doesn't have to rip 'em.
"I noticed it made you look like a steamboat, all laden with flags and pomp." He reaches for her, she pushes his hands away and disassembles his belt buckle.
"You don't like flags?" she asks, throwing his gunbelt across the room like it pissed her off.
"Don't much care for pomp." He wants more of her, needs her with a passion that shocks even him. He didn't know he could want a thing so bad. She's water in the desert, she's a five-card draw in high-stakes poker, she's… Ella.
The name of Alice goes away and she smiles like she can feel it go. "I get seasick." Then she throws him against the bars of the jail cell, the cold iron biting through the thin cloth of his shirt. It's always a surprise to him how strong she is, though it shouldn't be. Not like she's ever struck him as frail.
She kisses him again, her entire body seeming to throw itself behind the act. With jacket, vest, and shirt hanging open he can feel every inch of her chest pressed against his, undulating hypnotically, like she's feeding off something he's giving her. Her hands slap at the bars over him, clenching so tightly he's mildly surprised the iron doesn't give. Then she's lifting herself up onto him and it's all he can do to get himself out into his hand and then into her as she moves desperately over him, taking him inside her with a keening shudder. Her legs he feels clasp around his midsection, the sensation tangling with the itch of his muslin shirt, unbearable when he could be feeling her. He tugs it out and pulls it off and manages to shed most of what he can reach, his hat falling atop the pile by pure coincidence. She makes a noise like a laugh, hard to tell when her face is buried in his hair, and rides him like she's breaking in a horse.
He's trying to take charge, because that's the only way he knows to make her feel good, but she keeps pressing him harder against the bars, her head thrown back now, screaming like an Indian on a warpath. Her breasts are before him, her lips, her throat, every inch of her deserving to be worshipped, but all he can do is stand and stare and try to hold onto her as she fucks him. One hand is on the bars and one is on the cell door, and as she flows away from him only to thrust back against him, her swaying slams the door repeatedly, the noise dominating the room, the monotonous banging louder than her quietly broken climax.
Jake holds out with all his will, but in a few minutes he's forced to let his orgasm take him. Ella seeps into him, the droning of the cell door slowing down until she finally lets it fall shut, her body sagging against his. Her fingers go limp on the cell bars and he's able to pull her away, carrying her to the cot in his office and setting her down there. He's never seen her expression so unguarded, her face so bright and satisfied.
"If I'd known that was all it took, I would've waved my pussy in your face a while ago."
He hitches up his pants and pours himself into his chair. He would pull his hat over his eyes, but it's back with Ella's bustle. "Wasn't that and you know it."
"Yeah. I do."
There's a horse blanket on the floor, he dropped it there when he heard a card game turn to shooting the other day, and she has no shame in pulling it over herself with coquettish half-modesty. Seeing her covered, now all bare shoulders and long legs, he feels his loins go straight back to what they were doing.
He doesn't, though. It somehow seems like that would spoil it, just like Ella making gutter-mouthed jokes.
"What was your world like?"
She starts a little, looking at him with surprise in her eyes. It's an unfamiliar expression on her. She always looks like she's expected every little detail of the day. "I didn't know you cared about that sort of thing." Her lips tensed into a smile. "What was it you said? Goings-on in Mexico concern you more than in Asia, and outer space less than in Asia."
"I didn't say I was studying for a school test." Jake put his boots up, leaning down so he's more on eye level with her. "It's part of you. I'm curious about you. Seems a bit more polite to ask where you're from than who you favor in the White House."
Her smile relaxed a bit. She drifted down to the pillow. "We didn't like talking about politics where I'm from either."
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Date: 2011-08-13 11:41 am (UTC)I was actually convinced, prior to seeing the film, that Taggart would wind up dead so Jake could be Sheriff. But this is a much better way to do it, with him growing as a person and taking on a new identity.
Bravo. Hope you write more.
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Date: 2011-08-23 07:30 am (UTC)