Chapter Text
i.
Sheriff Hackett is taking measured paces in the creaking front door of the North Kill Sheriff’s Office when he hears the shackle of cuffs on a cell door and glances up. His typically useless keys jingle on his belt as he turns towards the source of his disturbance.
The North Kill County jail had sat empty in the years since he took up its mantle— drunks and fools let go in mere hours disregarded— but the past month it’s had a recurring guest, this morning included.
The blonde hair is the first thing Travis sees through the dwindling remains of the night being chased off by a rising spring sun. It knits gold into her hair, and pools across the remains of dried blood speckling the smooth, freckled skin of her arms. The edges of her dress are blood red, shrivelling them in its age.
A flickering breeze carries the scent of gunpowder off of her, and blood, sweat, and fading tobacco smoke. The cuffs restraining her against the door rattle like Church bells, something the Sheriff has years past become unfamiliar with, but any escape attempts have been fruitless. As always.
“‘Morning,” Travis drawls into the quiet, head bowed low but eyes glancing up.
The curled-up body merely groans.
Travis removes his hat and places it gingerly on his desk, ignoring the growing mound of paperwork begging to be filed. Paperwork which will meet an unfortunate end with a hastily lit fire in a trash can. “I said, ‘morning,’” he tries again.
This time, she stirs. Blue eyes peer at him from underneath the loosened blonde curls falling across her face, obscuring a clear view of her face. Whatever clips she had pinning it back have been loosened in a fight, and messy strings of her once done-up hair fall over her shoulders in clumped locks.
They block most of her features from his sight; he can, however, make out the bleeding cut on her lower lip as she shifts to get a look at her captor. The lofty look of bitterness gives way to something part relief, part recognition, and the tension held in her shoulders relaxes.
She’s not fresh out of the Cathouse, a drunk, or a rowdy public menace scooped out of the street. There’s that familiar flicker of warning buried in the shallow graves of her eyes, set in a face hardened by her lone years and emphasised by gun-weary hands brushing her hair out of her face.
Laura’s stare tacks his breath to the confines of his throat. “Yeah, sure,” she says. “Good morning, Sheriff Hackett.”
He meets the flash of her blue eyes in the space between them, grateful for the distance that keeps him from falling into them. Then she’s curling dirtied fingers onto the cell door and rattling her cuffs intentionally, using her grip to pull herself up on shaky legs covered by a skirt that’s certainly seen much better days.
The previous night is clinging to her like perfume to lace– dirt is smeared on her cheeks, blood splattered amongst the disarray of her hair, a mix of both pressed to what was once the fine fabric of her clothes. Fabric she could nary afford, and now will have to replace.
Travis is considering all of this as he withdraws his keys, unlooping them off his belt, and forces his weary gaze to her. His keys imprint against his palm, and then any promise of coffee is forgotten as he takes his time trying to find the right key to unlock her cuffs, aware of her eyes sweeping over him.
It’s a practised albeit clumsy dance they’ve done these past few months, one whose steps Travis feels he is still stumbling through, but whose steps he does regardless. In return, Laura manages to slot a cuffed hand past the bars, and the tips of her fingers brush his hand, withdrawing an involuntary shiver he tries to hide.
“What was it this time?” he manages to ask, ignoring the rush of heat the simple cadence of her touch provides. The first key slots into her cuffs unsuccessfully.
“Some asshole,” Laura starts, eye-roll accompanied. “Figured someone needed to teach him a lesson, so, I did. Not exactly like anyone of good moral standing was around to stop me.”
In the low light of the morning, Travis can make out the scars like freckles circling her right eye, an incident in a not-too-long-ago past she has yet to utter a word about. It surges up inside him, the beast of curiosity; since the first morning he found her in one of the cells nursing enough alcohol in her system to knock down a fully-grown man.
That, and whoever struck her opened an old cut she’d been nursing for weeks.
A jagged line down her cheek, accompanied by some story she’d spun about a wayward carriage robbery one of her first times cuffed in these cells. She’s back every few days roughed up, and yet not an ounce of the spitfire in her soul has been snuffed out.
Even now, she’s raising a precarious eyebrow at Travis and absentmindedly drawing her index finger to smooth over one of his as he works at finding the right key.
“Mmhhmm. ‘Course you did. Except, I told Chris where you were. Figured it might put an end to finding you passed out cold in my cells, hm?” Then, “Your face still ain’t quite healed, might scar.”
“It’s already scarred, so. My face is fine. Isn’t exactly like charming young men are asking for my hand, except Max and he’s not the type to get put off by a scar, anyway,” Laura retorts. “But the motherf*cker that opened it robbed me blind, so if you’re gonna ask me to pay bail–”
Travis huffs. “Since when does Miss Kearney pay her bail?”
“Jeez,” she breathes. “Skip out on paying it a few times, and suddenly I never do?”
“Incorrect,” he replies, with a tut of his tongue. He can’t help the line his eyes make across her face, down the jagged line of the cut on her cheek now crystalised with blood, to a small white, fleshy line vertically carved into her bottom lip. “I don’t think you’ve ever paid.”
And it’s true. Travis’ Deputy has dragged her in here a dozen times in the past three weeks, and every time Travis has let her go, accompanied by a soon-to-be-broken promise that she offers on her way out the door. If he hadn’t grown so fond of her, he’d take the stolen earrings she’s wearing or the ring on her finger decidedly not hers.
She watches him, amusem*nt blossoming on her face. It flushes her pale cheeks. “Do you want me to pay you, Sheriff?”
Laura’s cuffs rattle as he jostles them, successfully finding the right key and freeing her. She rubs at her wrists, a well-known look not of pain but of irritability birthed out of customariness warping her features.
Travis’ hands are still, despite the voice screaming that it’s a trap. “You got nothing to bargain with,” he tells her as he slots the right key, on the first try, into her cell door. It clicks open. “Go on, then, Kearney. I’ve got better things to do than write you up.” Again. Then, “I thought I told you we weren’t making a habit of this.”
“You did,” Laura confirms, smirking. “I didn’t.”
Her tongue sweeps over the healing cut deep in her lower lip, and Travis’ gaze immediately locks onto it. It’s deep, already scarring white on the rose pink of her lip’s flesh, blending into the layers of dirt and blood ruining the pretty canvas of her face.
“Gonna tell me who did it?” he asks, avoiding looking directly at her.
Laura co*cks an eyebrow at him, visibly building up her wall once again. “Does it really matter?” she replies, flippant.
It doesn’t have quite the intended effect. Maybe if she didn’t have painful purpling under her eyes, rings around her wrists from cuffs pulled too tight for too long, her clothes weren’t shredded and covered in muck, and there wasn’t proof of a rough night covering every inch of her.
Instead, it seems sad; meek and small in ways Travis has never thought of Laura. Of all the people in North Kill, she’s one of the few he’s sure can take care of themselves, no matter how tightly he has to clench his fists to resist offering her the unburdening of his assistance.
“I’m just saying,” he tries, returning his keys to his belt. “Chris said he saw you at the saloon last night–”
“I don’t need you keeping f*cking tabs on me, Travis,” Laura retorts. “I’m more than capable of handling this on my own.”
Travis regards her, then squares his shoulders and gathers whatever shreds of his confidence remain. “Handling what exactly?”
Under a splash of dried dirt, the scars zig-zagging their way around her right eye could easily be mistaken for freckles. Travis has never asked– never allowed her to make him privy to the darker parts of her life, ones he imagines would make the seed of worry bear fruit within him.
For months, he’s uncuffed her, let her out, and not asked questions.
Now, those same hands that have opened the door to the Sheriff’s office to escort her out are reaching to take a gentle hold of her arm. Her skin is warm against his, brushed with light hair that seems to stick on end the second he touches her; Laura’s eyes widen comically so, her neck straining against words she avoids spilling.
“Handling what?” he repeats. “I can’t help you unless you tell me. Let me work with you here.”
Insults are festering on her tongue, he knows. He can pinpoint the moment she decides to break her own rules, and one of her hands moves to grasp back at him, holding him close in the strong pull of her orbit.
Laura swallows, her eyes darting away before landing on his, peering with arrowed accuracy into the depths of his soul. “You sure you want to help?”
“I’m afraid it’s kind of my job, ma’am,” he tries to lighten the mood.
It falls flat on his ears, let alone Laura’s, but the breath choked in her throat dissipates. Ma’am. Her first night in here she threatened to kill him, called him a litany of words he deigns to repeat, and rattled the bars of her cell so fiercely he was worried they’d break.
It might seem like a slight, calling the muddied, roughed-up young woman ma’am, considering he’s sure he could smell the gunpowder on her hands and the whiskey on her breath if he tried. She is no ma’am, a few years too young for that, but she’s a woman; that hasn’t escaped his notice.
And that wild creature she had initially been is so far removed from the Laura of right now; the deft fingers pinching his sleeve, the deep sea of her honest eyes siren-calling him into their depths, the just-there part of lips he has studied too often.
The ma’am doesn’t escape Laura’s notice. There’s the nearly imperceptible twitch of her nose, wanting to crinkle in disagreement but forcing herself to deferently shake it off.
“This is different,” she replies, instead. “I appreciate the offer, Travis, but… it’s different. Dangerous. I can’t ask you to put yourself at risk like this. I mean, f*ck, I hardly expect me to put myself at risk, you understand?”
No, he doesn’t. But he nods in vague communication and casts a vast gaze over her features, trying to read the illegible story written on her face. The dotted scars near her eye, the slice down her lip, the decanter shine of her eyes. It tells him nothing.
Whatever it is, he needs to hear it.
“If not as the Sheriff, then as your friend,” Travis tries. “It’s not shameful to ask for help, Miss Kearney. And frankly, it’s been getting boring about North Kill and I could use something to pass the time.”
Laura blinks, once then twice. Her jaw visibly clenches, at war with herself. When she speaks, despite the feasibility of her words, Travis is sure he flinches.
“I’m going to kill Eliza Vorez,” she says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.
He stutters over asking for an explanation, aware of her growing impatience, until her fingers are lifting his hand to her face. Her touch glides the rough of his knuckles in a circular motion surrounding her right eye, revealing subtle lumps not visible to the naked eye; similar to the hump of string patching clothes, like a needle sewed invisible thread under her skin.
“Harum Scarum,” she says. “Do you know what that is?”
Travis grinds his back teeth, closing every door opening in his mind. “The Vorez’s travelling side-show, I remember it closed down a few years back... what about it?”
“Eliza Vorez used to collect circus freaks,” Laura starts, straining as though it’s taking physical effort to form the words. “And when she couldn’t find them, she made them. Her son, Silas, has a condition–”
“The hair. Called him the wolf boy,” Travis interjects.
Laura nods. “People used to line up for hours to see him. He was the tagline on all the posters, the reason people would wait outside her carriage. I mean, he was the whole reason her stage show was popular.”
Travis doesn’t miss the bitter trace in Laura’s voice or the spark of passion swallowing the ocean blue of her eyes.
“– but there were others, y’know. Like I said: when she couldn’t find them, she’d just make them. Didn’t matter how, didn’t matter who. As long as you could fit in a cage and put on a performance, no one cared.”
“Laura…”
“A week from now, she has to die.”
The finality of it compresses Travis’ lungs. “Give me names.”
Laura blinks, and the cruel tick of her jaw relaxes. The hold she has on him releases, and still he holds his hand there, narrowly tracing the texture of Laura’s scars. He’s never asked because it never quite felt like his business to; now, he wishes he had.
“Uh, names of what?” she asks, not recoiling from the unexpected linger of his touch.
“Anyone,” he replies. “There’s Eliza, so that’s priority, fine. But anyone else who did this, any one of the people who have roughed you up. I don’t care. You just give me a list.”
She doesn’t shrink away, and her teeth sink into her bottom lip, considering. “It would be a long list,” she says, then, quieter, “and more like a map of unmarked graves.”
Travis stares, gears clicking into place in his mind. Oh. The blood staining her clothes and dyeing strands of her blonde a nauseating shade of red, the familiar blisters on her palms from a gun he knows she harbours out of sight at all times; he had assumed trouble found her, and this whole time it’s been backwards.
If he was good at his job, or intent on doing it properly, he would throw her back in the cell she calls a second home. Instead, a thread of curiosity begins to unravel within him because looking at her in the knife’s edge of sunlight slicing through the nearest window, he can see it.
Laura with her knife poised in the air, Laura with a trigger carefully squeezed– blood spraying across her, disturbing the porcelain of her skin and shattering the image of a young woman with a bright future. Laura tossed in the empty cell, offering a smile set in a bloodied face each morning he saw her.
“That’s what you do,” Travis starts, “the nights you end up here? You… kill people?”
“So?” Laura dares. “They killed part of me, I kill them. An eye for an eye, right?”
He glances away, eyes catching on the spread of his desk. The Sheriff’s badge he didn’t take the care to pin to his shirt, the gun left in its holster, and the mocking stack of missing person posters he hadn’t made the time to distribute.
“I’ll need their names, too,” he tells her. His gaze refuses to meet hers. “Still got a job to do.”
“Probably have a better chance of being hanged than I do the Sheriff helping me kill one of the Vorez’s, right?” Laura mutters to herself. She watches the front door, a foot turned towards it in the event of her escape. “Travis, if you're going to try to stop me–”
Travis takes a careful, loose grasp of her arm to stop her bolting out the door and to draw her divided attention to him. “I mean it, Laura. Let me help you.”
She narrows her eyes, tilting her chin upwards to examine him. The heat of her breath ghosts against his neck. “Why? What could you possibly have to gain by helping me kill Eliza?”
“Caleb and Kaylee,” Travis tries. He’s sure his face is warm under the intensity of her watch. “They wanted to stop Harum Scarum, save that dog boy of Eliza’s. Chris talked ‘em out of it, but I don’t think they stopped thinking about it. And, whatever it is she did to you…”
“Please don’t ask me that.”
Travis nods, partially to himself. He doesn’t want to know details; knowing something happened is enough. He wants to assure her; “I wasn’t going to.”
“Okay,” Laura replies, simply.
In the small distance, they study each other. A quiet begins to stretch over them, tainted by the distant sound of carriages rolling through fresh mud after showers in the night, and the low chatter of workmen beginning to scatter themselves in the streets.
Their proximity gives him a better view of her scars, how they ripple ever so slightly under her skin. Unnoticeable most of the time, but now calling to Travis like a beacon that breaks the wave of nausea building inside of him. His stomach flips.
“You got a plan?”
Laura offers him a shrug, mouth shifting unsurely to one side. “I’m sort of making it up as I go,” she admits. “But, Eliza doesn’t remember who I am, so. It’ll be easy to kill her, I’m pretty sure. As long as she’s where she usually is.”
“No plan, then?”
Laura smirks. “No plan,” she confirms. “You okay with that, Sheriff Hackett?”
Unwittingly, he agrees.
The streets are alive this early in the morning– workmen hurrying to finish work they started before dawn, and townspeople bustling to and forth. Eight a.m. sun bakes the previous night’s mud into dirt, freezing tracks of carriages, horses, and boots temporarily in time.
Laura is aware of eyes lingering on her as she pushes past gathering crowds and tries to not focus on the sensation of dried blood flaking on her skin. Dyed red hands narrowly shove people out of her path, and she’s muttering a slew of apologies and insults under her breath.
To anyone, she likely looks like a woman who strayed too far from the Cathouse the previous night. People who have familiarised themselves with blood might spot it on her, but everyone else is too busy shouting names at her back as she shoves her way past them.
That’s when she spots him– standing outside the train station, waiting just like he’d promised he would.
Hanging out of his pocket, she can spy the two tickets he’ll be using to flee; beside him is Dylan, the object of his affection and the man who’s taking Laura’s best friend to some big city in some foreign country she doesn’t care about.
“Ryan!” she calls.
He’s fixing his cap on his head, busy tucking his freshly cut hair beneath it. Loyally at his side, Dylan is grinning at him fondly, no doubt biting off a comment Ryan is exhaling deeply in response to.
“Wow, hey, look who it is,” Dylan grins, his endearment to Laura genuine. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Miss Kearney?”
Before she can reply Ryan is giving her a once-over, wincing. “What the hell happened to you? You look like sh*t.”
Laura scoffs. “Is that any way to talk to a lady, Mister Ezrahler?”
“Oh, do you see one around here?” Ryan asks. A rare peek of a smile warps his lips, then he’s reaching to pull her into a hug, managing to school the scrunch of disgust on his face when he notices the layer of blood clinging to her clothes. “You smell like sh*t, too, by the way.”
“What he means to say, lovely Laura, is that you’ve clearly had a very rough night and it’s nice of you to come and wave us off,” Dylan interrupts. “He puts up a brave front, but about a minute ago, he was worrying you weren’t gonna make it in time to see us before we left.”
Face warming, Ryan departs from the hug. Laura’s grasp on him falls to his elbows. “See? And you said you wouldn’t miss me.”
“Uh, actually, I said I wouldn’t miss you being an ass to me all the time,” Ryan corrects, eyebrows raised. “Which, I stand by. You were almost late, and you knew we were leaving today.”
Their train roars its approach in the distance, rattling the tracks near them. People scattered about clutching newspapers and heavy suitcases begin to stand, streaming past Ryan, Laura and Dylan, and going along with the chime of the heavy clock near them.
“We gotta go, man,” Dylan says— his hand presses to Ryan’s back, the other gesturing to the noisy train approaching. “Finish up your goodbyes.” Then, to Laura, “I’ll make sure he writes, don’t worry.”
Ryan peels away, reaching to grab his luggage. “You better let me know how it goes with Eliza,” he tells her. “Seriously. You’ve been at this for how many years?”
Too many to count; they’ve blurred into one in her memory, inseparable from one another. For the best, she thinks, that she can’t dwell on how much of her life was thieved against her will. It’s unfair to mention this to Ryan, so she doesn’t, and instead busies herself helping him collect the rest of his things.
“Does it matter?” she says, flippant. “I’m gonna end it soon, anyway.”
“That’s our girl,” Dylan grins. He leans to ruffle her already messy hair and immediately regrets it, peeling his hand away and making a face at the blood tangled in Laura’s loose curls. “Seriously. I know I defended you, but it’s not a crime to bathe.”
A flash of last night– the dying rasp of a man, the dirt piled onto his body, the taste of a cigarette she smuggled out of his pocket. It’s all stuck on her, a living memory she can’t wait to shed.
“Jeez, Dylan, would you shut the f*ck up?” she tells him, fighting a smile of her own. “You two have fun, yeah? Tell me what it’s like in London.”
“Lotta distance to cover there.” Ryan glances over, a plea in his eyes to her to not tell him she’ll miss him. “Letters might take a while, but we’ll write. Let you know how it is. Who knows, Laur, maybe you’ll decide to join us.”
Dylan slings an arm around his neck. “Um, sounds like a bit of wishful thinking to me. Ignore him, Laura. You should stay in New York, it’s more… your style.”
“My style?” Laura presses, smile widening.
“Well, yeah,” Dylan says. The expression on his face makes Laura smother a laugh. “You’re a New York girl through and through. Ryan, though, he’s a London guy. It’s so drab and miserable there, I have no doubt he’ll fit right in.”
Ryan knocks the back of his hand into Dylan’s arm. “Hey. Rude.”
“Truth hurts, man,” Dylan replies, winking at Laura. “Besides, it’s not like I’m wrong.”
A sharp whistle splits the air, cutting their conversation short. Passengers are rushing to get their seats, flashes of colours and fabrics too rich for Laura’s taste swirling in her vision as they shove their way towards the train.
Luggage in hand, Dylan and Ryan offer Laura one more hug each, both lingering a second longer than usual. They get swallowed up in the swarthy textures of clothes pouring into Laura’s peripheral, and she watches them fade into the crowd until she’s the lone one left on the platform.
Her eyes dart into the train windows, trying to find one last glimpse of them. There are too many people and they melt into one another, and it’s as Laura’s about to give up that she sees him. Tall, peeking over the heads of other boarding passengers. Ryan.
“Is he gonna help you? Chris’ brother?” he calls.
Laura raises a hand in the sea of people, a thumb up. A yes, a thank you, the unspoken I’ll miss you he never wanted to hear.
And then the train is rolling away, taking two of Laura’s favourite people with it to a country she’ll never see. She bunches her dirty hands in her torn skirts, preparing to avoid people’s pressing gazes, and steps off the platform, preparing to make the long way home.
A poster is faded in the sun and rain, advertising a show that’s passed through here many times; too many with Laura included. She crinkles its aged paper in her hands, trying to ignore the quell of vicious anxiety beginning to thrum under her skin, a forever reminder of the years of torment stuck to the backs of her eyelids.
In a week, she’s going to kill Eliza Vorez.
She’s thinking of it as her boots crunch in drying mud, as she passes a man balanced on a ladder trying to paint the side of a general store. It’s the singular thought clinging to the recesses of her mind, a way to distract the heart in her chest aching to follow her only friends out of this place somewhere new, somewhere ghosts aren’t hiding in every corner.
Speaking of ghosts, the Harum Scarum carriage is parked beside the local theatre– Laura can see her standing there, the hem of her dress having caught the dawn’s mud and a scratch of fabric pooled in her hands.
Laura catches her eye and smiles wide. The motion of it pulls her skin, and she can almost feel the painful stitching of a patch to her skin all those years ago, can remember screaming her throat hoarse. The fingers tangled in her skirts twitch, itching to reach to grab the pistol hidden in her left boot.
Eliza merely watches her pass, a snarl puppeteering her mouth.
She genuinely doesn’t remember her, Laura thinks. A handful of years of Laura’s life gambled away for money and the woman who did it doesn’t even have the common decency to recall the girl whose remaining adolescence she spoiled.
Any last lingering doubts Laura had vanish into thin air, replaced by a heady determination that won’t be moved.
She’s going to kill her, no matter what. With a knife or a gun, or her bare hands if she has to. All she knows is that in a week, she’ll find herself in that familiar seat in the saloon and the Sheriff at her side, and she’ll make sure it ends. No matter how it happens, if he pulls the trigger or she does.
When the dawn is signalling Laura’s first morning without Eliza’s memory holding her hostage, she’ll shed those shackles she never truly escaped, and she’ll write to Ryan and Dylan; she’ll tell them she always fancied living in London.
And she won’t let herself dwell on thoughts about Travis Hackett– who was too quick to extend an offer to help that she expected to have to pull out of him, too understanding of the rage of a young woman wronged– at all.
