[ It's one thing for John to asks his questions; only Arthur has him beat for time served, and if that weren't enough, he's got a gun and a strong back and a willingness to throw himself into jobs. That affords him some leeway - he isn't sure the same can be said for Abigail. He's too aware that, with how the pieces are falling, it would be something entirely different for Abigail to start acting defiant. She did her part, but not often or extravagantly enough to excuse that particular sin. To many of the men, he's sure that her main contribution since she's stopped working has been creating another mouth to feed.
He's already heard in passing what's being whispered to Dutch. Let the weak go. Dutch has proven admirable in his rejection of this so far. John isn't sure how much longer that would last.
John pulls the rifle's buttstock against his shoulder and lays his gaze down the sights, into the soupy bowl of mist and trees below them. He examines the sights, the feel of the metal beneath his hands. He lets the words sit in his head for a minute. ]
Listen.
[ He pulls the rifle down into his lap and soaks another swatch of fabric with blackened oil. ]
You oughta have yourself and the boy ready. [ He's murmuring now, glancing toward her as he rubs the roughness out, ] To go, I mean.
[A long pause hangs between them before she gives a small, firm nod in response— reserved, but not timid. Never timid; nobody had ever accused Abigail Roberts of that particular sin. Her gaze follows his; for all that's being left unsaid, it's somehow easier to say what they do without looking directly at one another, or so it seems.]
I will.
[It wouldn't take much. Not like they had much of anything to call their own to begin with, and they were always prepared for the gang to be on the move if something went sideways, but she knows that's not what John means. She's thought about it already, tucked a few things away that wouldn't be missed so that they could run in a pinch if it came down to it.
She meets that glance of his, however briefly, and if she takes a couple of steps closer to him as she pulls her shawl just a bit closer around her shoulders, then so be it.]
We oughta pick somewhere to— [To meet, in case they get separated, but speaking it into being doesn't seem wise. She exhales.] Maybe I'll take him into town.
[ Town is a thought discarded without a hint of effort, though more patience and with a gentler hand than might have been used weeks earlier. He smears his gun oil down the rifle's forestock, leaving a glisten behind his swatch. ]
Town means law. And if this goes real bad, they'll kill you and him both if it means gettin' me.
[ She probably can't be blamed for that misstep. John hasn't exactly been forthcoming about the actual nature of this job. He feels the oil-soaked fabric catch on a rough patch and begins to dig his fingernails into it through its grimy weave, scrubbing back and forth. ]
Get a bag of his things ready, some food and water. This goes bad, you ignore Grimshaw and them. Take a gun, take the boy, take yourselves somewhere quiet. [ The last of the crust is rubbed away, and John continues down to the muzzle as he speaks. ] Quiet, and far away. There's a hunting cabin up north, in the Roanoake - there, maybe. I can be there quick.
[ The rifle, he reasons, should be less involved than the revolver - he's done it recently. Good. He hates disassembling the chamber and cleaning the bolt.
He's turning over the gun in his hands when he adds, lowly; ]
If it ain't Arthur or me who comes to get you, shoot.
[Of course. Town means law. Even after all this time, she still has trouble thinking like a criminal every now and again. They did what they did to survive— or that's how it used to be. Her earliest days with the Van der Linde Gang felt a lifetime away, these days.
Her jaw sets into a hard line as she watches him, arms folded in front of her. It hardly came as a surprise that he'd be doing something that could easily get him shot at, but even without knowing the details, his tone tells her more than the words themselves.
The stakes are higher this time. She exhales, and she can feel the shudder of it between her shoulders, every inch of her tense.]
Roanoake. We can do that. I got more ready than you know.
[She doesn't know what she'll tell Jack if it comes to that— something to worry about later on, if she has to.]
John.
[The severe edge her voice often carries has softened slightly, gentled as she takes two more steps towards him, finally standing just beside the spot where he's chosen to set himself, her brow furrowed. She'd known whatever was ahead had to be beyond dangerous, but to hear John himself speak this way...]
How bad is it?
[Her voice is low; nobody who happened to pass by would be able to overhear even if they wanted to.]
[ Clean enough. John sets it aside, butt on the ground, forestock against the splintered log.
Next, he pulls the double-barrel shotgun into his lap, comb-down, and examines its underside. He flips it, breaks sharply the ejector from the hammer and lever. He glances quickly over the thin, encrusted layers of gunpowder inside.
Birdsong settles over the greened hollow. Mist clots between the trees. A graceful-limbed young stag crunches away browse. The frogs would blot out the birds further down in the rocks, closer to the water. The grasses fringing the creek rustle with the passing of muskrats into the water, invisible from this height and through these impenetrable mists. Somewhere, a tree rustles as a flock relieves its branches of its entire weight.
John dots oil into the hinge pins and begins scrubbing. ]
[His refusal to answer puts a severe crease in her brow, right between her eyes, and she shifts to brace her hands against her hips as she stands over him.
The scenery and all that goes with it are lost on her. She knows this game.]
John Marston.
[There's an edge to her voice that's only ever directed at him, a severity that has been carefully crafted to cover the kind of fear she had never known until she had someone to worry about other than herself.
She kneels down in front of him, leaning in to brace her arm against his knees and force herself into his field of vision, taking up as much of his lap as his gun.]
[ It isn't a question he would have ignored as little as a handful of weeks ago.
Back before he had shed his boyhood cock-suredness, his eagerness to do anything he could to get himself in the firing line. He had been looking to pay back the ones who had given him his life in blood for too long to do anything less. His abysmal luck in recent days had only stoked that fire hotter for a time. He had to make up getting shot on the ferry, then lost in the mountains, then chewed apart by wolves, then held up by Cornwall and his hired help. Incident by incident, his rotten luck piles up - and so does what he owes the inner circle. It didn't matter how dangerous the road ahead would prove; he'd walk down it, fearlessly, right into the next bullet. Most importantly, he'd have walked it proudly.
He'd stopped keeping the tally around the time he watched his father drown a man and feed him to waters writhing with gators.
He'd left Sisika and escaped the hangman's noose a different man entirely. The look he gives Abigail is hard, but not the hardness she might be accustomed to. It's a shell - what's underneath it is no longer more rock, but something moving and softened. ]
Don't ask me that.
[ He says it as gently as he can while he swirls his finger inside the barrel of his gun. ]
Do what I told you, Abigail. Worry for the boy 'stead of me.
[For just a moment, she meets that hard gaze of his in silence, her own stubborn but only thinly veiling the fear beneath it. For the longest time, she'd been afraid to let it show in earnest— but the way things were going now, she doesn't feel like she needs to hide it as much as she once had, not from him.
If she can't be honest with him about this, who could she?]
Ain't nothing you can say that will ever keep me from worryin' about you.
[It's not often that she admits to such things so plainly, but in this moment, it feels important. There's distinct resolve in her voice, but she's not pushing back at him, not arguing.]
I'll take care of him. Always do.
[She's not good at many things, she figures, but she has always been determined to be a good mother. She'll put her son first in all things.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He's already heard in passing what's being whispered to Dutch. Let the weak go. Dutch has proven admirable in his rejection of this so far. John isn't sure how much longer that would last.
John pulls the rifle's buttstock against his shoulder and lays his gaze down the sights, into the soupy bowl of mist and trees below them. He examines the sights, the feel of the metal beneath his hands. He lets the words sit in his head for a minute. ]
Listen.
[ He pulls the rifle down into his lap and soaks another swatch of fabric with blackened oil. ]
You oughta have yourself and the boy ready. [ He's murmuring now, glancing toward her as he rubs the roughness out, ] To go, I mean.
no subject
I will.
[It wouldn't take much. Not like they had much of anything to call their own to begin with, and they were always prepared for the gang to be on the move if something went sideways, but she knows that's not what John means. She's thought about it already, tucked a few things away that wouldn't be missed so that they could run in a pinch if it came down to it.
She meets that glance of his, however briefly, and if she takes a couple of steps closer to him as she pulls her shawl just a bit closer around her shoulders, then so be it.]
We oughta pick somewhere to— [To meet, in case they get separated, but speaking it into being doesn't seem wise. She exhales.] Maybe I'll take him into town.
no subject
[ Town is a thought discarded without a hint of effort, though more patience and with a gentler hand than might have been used weeks earlier. He smears his gun oil down the rifle's forestock, leaving a glisten behind his swatch. ]
Town means law. And if this goes real bad, they'll kill you and him both if it means gettin' me.
[ She probably can't be blamed for that misstep. John hasn't exactly been forthcoming about the actual nature of this job. He feels the oil-soaked fabric catch on a rough patch and begins to dig his fingernails into it through its grimy weave, scrubbing back and forth. ]
Get a bag of his things ready, some food and water. This goes bad, you ignore Grimshaw and them. Take a gun, take the boy, take yourselves somewhere quiet. [ The last of the crust is rubbed away, and John continues down to the muzzle as he speaks. ] Quiet, and far away. There's a hunting cabin up north, in the Roanoake - there, maybe. I can be there quick.
[ The rifle, he reasons, should be less involved than the revolver - he's done it recently. Good. He hates disassembling the chamber and cleaning the bolt.
He's turning over the gun in his hands when he adds, lowly; ]
If it ain't Arthur or me who comes to get you, shoot.
no subject
Her jaw sets into a hard line as she watches him, arms folded in front of her. It hardly came as a surprise that he'd be doing something that could easily get him shot at, but even without knowing the details, his tone tells her more than the words themselves.
The stakes are higher this time. She exhales, and she can feel the shudder of it between her shoulders, every inch of her tense.]
Roanoake. We can do that. I got more ready than you know.
[She doesn't know what she'll tell Jack if it comes to that— something to worry about later on, if she has to.]
John.
[The severe edge her voice often carries has softened slightly, gentled as she takes two more steps towards him, finally standing just beside the spot where he's chosen to set himself, her brow furrowed. She'd known whatever was ahead had to be beyond dangerous, but to hear John himself speak this way...]
How bad is it?
[Her voice is low; nobody who happened to pass by would be able to overhear even if they wanted to.]
no subject
Next, he pulls the double-barrel shotgun into his lap, comb-down, and examines its underside. He flips it, breaks sharply the ejector from the hammer and lever. He glances quickly over the thin, encrusted layers of gunpowder inside.
Birdsong settles over the greened hollow. Mist clots between the trees. A graceful-limbed young stag crunches away browse. The frogs would blot out the birds further down in the rocks, closer to the water. The grasses fringing the creek rustle with the passing of muskrats into the water, invisible from this height and through these impenetrable mists. Somewhere, a tree rustles as a flock relieves its branches of its entire weight.
John dots oil into the hinge pins and begins scrubbing. ]
no subject
The scenery and all that goes with it are lost on her. She knows this game.]
John Marston.
[There's an edge to her voice that's only ever directed at him, a severity that has been carefully crafted to cover the kind of fear she had never known until she had someone to worry about other than herself.
She kneels down in front of him, leaning in to brace her arm against his knees and force herself into his field of vision, taking up as much of his lap as his gun.]
Don't you ignore me! How bad is it?
no subject
Back before he had shed his boyhood cock-suredness, his eagerness to do anything he could to get himself in the firing line. He had been looking to pay back the ones who had given him his life in blood for too long to do anything less. His abysmal luck in recent days had only stoked that fire hotter for a time. He had to make up getting shot on the ferry, then lost in the mountains, then chewed apart by wolves, then held up by Cornwall and his hired help. Incident by incident, his rotten luck piles up - and so does what he owes the inner circle. It didn't matter how dangerous the road ahead would prove; he'd walk down it, fearlessly, right into the next bullet. Most importantly, he'd have walked it proudly.
He'd stopped keeping the tally around the time he watched his father drown a man and feed him to waters writhing with gators.
He'd left Sisika and escaped the hangman's noose a different man entirely. The look he gives Abigail is hard, but not the hardness she might be accustomed to. It's a shell - what's underneath it is no longer more rock, but something moving and softened. ]
Don't ask me that.
[ He says it as gently as he can while he swirls his finger inside the barrel of his gun. ]
Do what I told you, Abigail. Worry for the boy 'stead of me.
no subject
If she can't be honest with him about this, who could she?]
Ain't nothing you can say that will ever keep me from worryin' about you.
[It's not often that she admits to such things so plainly, but in this moment, it feels important. There's distinct resolve in her voice, but she's not pushing back at him, not arguing.]
I'll take care of him. Always do.
[She's not good at many things, she figures, but she has always been determined to be a good mother. She'll put her son first in all things.]