Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ikissdhimbck) wrote2008-10-31 03:55 pm
ikissdhimbck) wrote2008-10-31 03:55 pm
OOM sorta: In her room, Katherine dreams...
She hasn't been sleeping well, lately.
A lot has been on Miss Katherine's mind these past few weeks, since she has found herself Bound in Milliways. She's stuck, without a way back home to her life in Green Lake, and she's feeling the reality of that settle heavy on her chest.
And the pain and anxiety of stressed relations between a certain other patron and herself as of late has not aided her any, in her search for peace of mind.
When she goes to sleep, with all these thoughts and worries on her mind, she dreams, vividly and without pause.
***
The crunch of rock and dirt under hooves as the carriage horses trot along is hypnotic. It had been a long journey, from Louisiana back home to Southeastern Texas, only a few days past. She's still weary, and the steady clop-clop-clop almost lulls her into a sleep.
It's only the early weeks of her second semester at Tulane, and a full year yet from graduation. She had decided to come home for the holidays, following a suggestion made by one of her teachers to visit neighboring towns in need, feeling out where her talents as a schoolteacher might be best put to use. She had spent her first day home with her father, and then set off on this expedition.
It's in one such town, by the name of Green Lake, that a simple messenger, sent posthaste, so suddenly changed her plans.
Changed her plans entirely.
Distantly, she can hear the carriage master call a change to the horses, but it's the change in the steady rhythm of their hoofbeats that truly snaps her out of her daze. She peers out the glassless window of the stagecoach onto familiar desert and field.
It was morning when the messenger came for her. Now, the sun is slowly sinking behind scrub-pocked foothills.
It won't be long now.
A good deal of self-restraint is needed to wait for the carriage master to circle around and open the door for her when they finally come to a stop. She accepts the offered hand, practically leaping from the coach onto dry dust, straightening the common folds of her traveling dress and the hat atop her head as she searches out familiar faces.
She doesn't have to search long.
"Miss Katherine!"
It's Henry, the house steward. He's walking from the farm house—simple, white-washed walls, and that arbor on either side of the door her daddy had built for her momma, so she could plant crawling violets and morning glories.
They're blooming plum and cotton candy pink from a tangle of green.
"Henry!"
She wastes no time in picking up her skirts, moving to meet him halfway. Jim, the stable master, and Tom, too, are trailing behind him. She can see the rest of the farmhands out by the far fence, beyond the corral where the buckskin and the two pintos are grazing. They're conversing in a tight group, but they stop when they catch sight of her, following her with their eyes.
"Where is he?!"
Her heart is beating so damn fast.
"Miss Kate, please try to calm yerself down. Maybe you'd like to get changed from your riding clothes, at least?"
It's the compassion in his soft voice that makes her stomach turn.
"I heard there was an accident?"
"He was out hunting, Miss."
He won't quite meet her eyes.
"What happened?" she presses, her voice firm, despite the unsteadiness she feels raging through every inch of her body. "Henry, please!"
There is a pause, faint sounds echoing around her: horse hooves shifting and stomping; a soft nicker; boots scuffing nervously in dirt; voices murmuring, low and far off.
"...He ain't with us no more, Miss. I'm sorry to say."
The soft 'ahem' of a clearing throat; bramble rustling belligerently in a dry breeze; harnesses and bits and reins shifting and settling, tink!ing and click!ing.
"What do you mean!" she cries. It doesn't even sound like her voice.
"They're bringing the body up now, the boys from the Crocker estate."
Body. Accident. Crocker estate. Hunting.
He ain't with us no more, Miss.
"Oh god."
She can feel the sting of tears in her eyes, the rise of bile in her throat. Everything else is numb. The wind is blowing, and she is afraid it might push her over. She looks at Henry, and he actually looks back, and that's when she realizes she wished she hadn't looked. "Oh god!"
The world goes black.
***
She wakes up with a start, the smell of sal volatile burning in her nostrils.
It was a dream. A horrible dream. Just a dream.
The voices of the ranch hands are breezing in through the open window, lace curtains blowing over her body. She's on the burgundy couch in her living room—the living room in the old farmhouse, with the arbor on either side of the front door for those crawling vines.
"Miss Kate?"
She blinks hard, mind slowly crawling out of the thick fog. She can see the old grandfather clock, timeworn old bits polished until they shine. The oval portrait above the woodstove, yellowed faces of her momma and her daddy, and on his knee she herself, when she was but a baby. She can see his old study chair, burgundy stained and faded, ashtray sitting on the delicate table beside.
"Miss Kate?"
She blinks hard, mind slowly crawling out of the thick fog.
Her daddy had got himself a maid, when Katherine had gone off to college. Her name was Margaret. She was boxy, hair the color of beaver pelts, mossy eyes set inside a thin little face. She couldn't be much more than thirty.
"Margaret."
"You swooned, Miss. Been about ten minutes, you've been out cold. I only 'magine the news couldn't 've been easy to hear..."
"News?" Katherine repeats. Her throat is sore.
It wasn't a dream.
"Where is Henry?" she asks, panic rising again to the surface.
Margaret blinks at her, brow creased with worry. "He's just stepped back outside, Miss. The boys are comin' up from the Crocker's, 'long with the sheriff and 'is deputy..."
Katherine doesn't have to wait to hear another word. She's already out the door, Margaret's unrefined voice calling after her as sunlight hits her in the face. She throws a hand over her eyes, peering through finger-slatted shade until she spots her quarry.
Henry's back is to her, standing akimbo at the gold horizon, shouting to the hands out by the corral. She moves to him swiftly. Manuel is leading Walker, a dapple mare, over the crest, towards Henry. Chenoa is beside him with Conquistador and Dusty.
Dusty is her father's starred gray.
And that's when she sees him.
There are three Crocker boys hefting his limp corpse behind Manuel and Chenoa, Bill Crocker moseying on behind with the sheriff and deputy in tow.
They didn't even do him the dignity of putting him on a wagon.
Her hand drops to cover her mouth, bile revisiting her throat at the sight. She's never seen him like this before.
There are two boys at his head, hands under his armpits, and the third at his legs. His body is tall and awkward, and in their young, thin arms he rests awkwardly, like a broken marionette without his strings. His head is lolled to the side, pale and wilted like dying birch in windswept snow, and his right arm is bent over his middle, dead fingers clutching at scarlet threads. His hand is stained red, red, red.
Like the rest of his torso.
"Daddy."
The lines blur with her heartbeat, scenery jumping and shifting with each aching throb. And that's when her sleeping mind twists the memory, and events so cold and familiar are suddenly different as she sees them.
Henry turns at the sound of her voice, but when he looks at her, it's not Henry's face she's seeing.
"Well, that's a pa to be proud of."
He tips his hat at her, with that grizzled chin turned in a frown; dark, cold eyes cutting deep. Outlaw's eyes. Killer's eyes. Ben Wade's eyes.
Her heartbeat rings in her ears.
"Suppose it's God's way of sayin' 'I told you so.'."
The boy at her daddy's right shoulder lifts his blonde head, grey-green eyes smirking at her.
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up."
"No."
Yes.
Their arms let go, all of a sudden, dropping her father to the dust. His body hits with a sickening thud, cloud of orange dirt curling around his blood-dampened carcass. Bill Crocker smiles, thumbs in his lapels.
"Best I can tell, it was a hunting accident, Miss," says the sheriff. "Stray bullet meant for a buck. Terrible shame."
Stray bullet straight through the heart.
"Seems it ain't too often you can trust the word of the law, these days."
Her eyes move back to that familiar blonde boy, young face grizzled and dirty, eyes wicked and lips curled. Her stomach churns. His stare feels like ice.
"Ain't no one fought for my pa like that."
"Someone should have."
Someone should have.
"Sure 'bout that? You gotta door, I gotta gun. And I don't miss."
She can't stand the dark daggers from those familiar blue eyes. It isn't Henry. It isn't her dad. But he means something to her.
She can't stand the dark daggers from those familiar blue eyes.
"Y'ever wonder what life mighta been like if just one little thing had gone different?"
It wasn't there, but now it is. She doesn't remember picking it up, but it's in her arms. It's not hers, but it's hers. The butt of that old Winchester Model 1885 Low Wall Custom .45 Colt rifle settles into her shoulder.
It doesn't feel good, but it feels right.
"Ain't no one fought for my pa like that."
"Someone should have."
He's smirking at her.
"You know, I can't even tell you how many men I've killed."
She can't stand that smirk.
"But somebody's got to be brave enough to stand up against the bad folk and put their foot down, say they ain't gonna take no shit anymore."
It's only after her cry dies from her throat that she hears the discharge, loud and brash and booming. His body jerks as his feet come out from underneath him, whiplash throwing that blonde hair in his face as he groans. Lead meets bone and tendon and marrow, a sickening crack audible even beyond the echoing blast.
And then another.
He stumbles, blood dripping from his parted lips. Gray-green eyes glower for only a moment before they turn soft. Helpless. Betrayed.
"This ain't your fault. You ain't that woman. You didn't know, Katie. He didn't tell you."
She cuts down the other two before his body even has time to hit the ground.
But when it hits, it's never going to get back up.
"...Kate."
She drops the rifle.
There is blood on her hands.
"Think you can stand, Katya?"
***
She gasps and flies awake, throwing herself back in her chair.
It's midday, and the sun is shining in warm and rich through the windows of her little schoolhouse. She had fallen asleep at her desk again.
"Everything all right, Miss Katherine?"
She jerks her head around to spy Sam near her desk, throwing a cleaning rag in his toolbox as he steps nearer her, brow creased with worry.
"Oh, Sam!" she cries, startled and relieved in equal measure, rising from her seat. "I was having the most dreadful dream!"
"You're all right," he soothes, gathering her into his arms. His dark, calloused fingers work gently through her hair.
She's all right. She's home. It was all a bad dream. Just a bad dream. He's got her.
"I was scared I wouldn't never see you again."
"Now, why would you think a silly thing like that?" he chuckles into her hair, arms snug around her. She chuckles in return.
"Maybe I'm just a silly girl."
"Maybe you're just a tease," replies a voice unlike the gentle rasp of Sam's sweet drawl.
She pulls back and looks up.
Gold teeth glint at her from the corner of his mouth.
"Afternoon, Miss Katherine," Trout Walker sneers, his hands going tight around her arms. "Haven't forgot about me, have you?"
Her soul goes cold.
Nobody says 'no' to Charles Walker!
***
When she finally awakes in her room at Milliways, it's with pounding heart and sweat-dampened sheets. She gasps, rising in bed until she's sitting upright, what covers she hasn't kicked from her body now pooling in her lap. She's struggling for air, blinking in the darkness of the room.
Milliways.
For a long time she just sits there, Trout's leering smirk burned to the backs of her eyes, eyes unfocused on the midnight-tinted sheets at her feet. She's trying to catch her breath, but every inch of her body is trembling.
"Katie."
"Daddy?" her head snaps up, eyes searching the room. There's no one there. Just the deep blanket of blue, moonlight slicing through the blinds.
There's a chill at the back of her neck, as sweat begins to cool in the night air. Slowly, she falls to her side, tucking her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs and staring across the room at an empty chair.
When dawn breaks, she falls asleep again, still curled into a tight ball.
.
A lot has been on Miss Katherine's mind these past few weeks, since she has found herself Bound in Milliways. She's stuck, without a way back home to her life in Green Lake, and she's feeling the reality of that settle heavy on her chest.
And the pain and anxiety of stressed relations between a certain other patron and herself as of late has not aided her any, in her search for peace of mind.
(He's gone, now. Out through his door. And she doesn't blame him a bit.)
When she goes to sleep, with all these thoughts and worries on her mind, she dreams, vividly and without pause.
***
The crunch of rock and dirt under hooves as the carriage horses trot along is hypnotic. It had been a long journey, from Louisiana back home to Southeastern Texas, only a few days past. She's still weary, and the steady clop-clop-clop almost lulls her into a sleep.
It's only the early weeks of her second semester at Tulane, and a full year yet from graduation. She had decided to come home for the holidays, following a suggestion made by one of her teachers to visit neighboring towns in need, feeling out where her talents as a schoolteacher might be best put to use. She had spent her first day home with her father, and then set off on this expedition.
It's in one such town, by the name of Green Lake, that a simple messenger, sent posthaste, so suddenly changed her plans.
Changed her plans entirely.
Distantly, she can hear the carriage master call a change to the horses, but it's the change in the steady rhythm of their hoofbeats that truly snaps her out of her daze. She peers out the glassless window of the stagecoach onto familiar desert and field.
It was morning when the messenger came for her. Now, the sun is slowly sinking behind scrub-pocked foothills.
It won't be long now.
A good deal of self-restraint is needed to wait for the carriage master to circle around and open the door for her when they finally come to a stop. She accepts the offered hand, practically leaping from the coach onto dry dust, straightening the common folds of her traveling dress and the hat atop her head as she searches out familiar faces.
She doesn't have to search long.
"Miss Katherine!"
It's Henry, the house steward. He's walking from the farm house—simple, white-washed walls, and that arbor on either side of the door her daddy had built for her momma, so she could plant crawling violets and morning glories.
They're blooming plum and cotton candy pink from a tangle of green.
"Henry!"
She wastes no time in picking up her skirts, moving to meet him halfway. Jim, the stable master, and Tom, too, are trailing behind him. She can see the rest of the farmhands out by the far fence, beyond the corral where the buckskin and the two pintos are grazing. They're conversing in a tight group, but they stop when they catch sight of her, following her with their eyes.
"Where is he?!"
Her heart is beating so damn fast.
"Miss Kate, please try to calm yerself down. Maybe you'd like to get changed from your riding clothes, at least?"
It's the compassion in his soft voice that makes her stomach turn.
"I heard there was an accident?"
"He was out hunting, Miss."
He won't quite meet her eyes.
"What happened?" she presses, her voice firm, despite the unsteadiness she feels raging through every inch of her body. "Henry, please!"
There is a pause, faint sounds echoing around her: horse hooves shifting and stomping; a soft nicker; boots scuffing nervously in dirt; voices murmuring, low and far off.
"...He ain't with us no more, Miss. I'm sorry to say."
The soft 'ahem' of a clearing throat; bramble rustling belligerently in a dry breeze; harnesses and bits and reins shifting and settling, tink!ing and click!ing.
"What do you mean!" she cries. It doesn't even sound like her voice.
"They're bringing the body up now, the boys from the Crocker estate."
He ain't with us no more, Miss.
"Oh god."
She can feel the sting of tears in her eyes, the rise of bile in her throat. Everything else is numb. The wind is blowing, and she is afraid it might push her over. She looks at Henry, and he actually looks back, and that's when she realizes she wished she hadn't looked. "Oh god!"
The world goes black.
***
She wakes up with a start, the smell of sal volatile burning in her nostrils.
It was a dream. A horrible dream. Just a dream.
The voices of the ranch hands are breezing in through the open window, lace curtains blowing over her body. She's on the burgundy couch in her living room—the living room in the old farmhouse, with the arbor on either side of the front door for those crawling vines.
Plum and cotton candy pink.
"Miss Kate?"
She blinks hard, mind slowly crawling out of the thick fog. She can see the old grandfather clock, timeworn old bits polished until they shine. The oval portrait above the woodstove, yellowed faces of her momma and her daddy, and on his knee she herself, when she was but a baby. She can see his old study chair, burgundy stained and faded, ashtray sitting on the delicate table beside.
"Miss Kate?"
She blinks hard, mind slowly crawling out of the thick fog.
Her daddy had got himself a maid, when Katherine had gone off to college. Her name was Margaret. She was boxy, hair the color of beaver pelts, mossy eyes set inside a thin little face. She couldn't be much more than thirty.
"Margaret."
"You swooned, Miss. Been about ten minutes, you've been out cold. I only 'magine the news couldn't 've been easy to hear..."
"News?" Katherine repeats. Her throat is sore.
It wasn't a dream.
"Where is Henry?" she asks, panic rising again to the surface.
Margaret blinks at her, brow creased with worry. "He's just stepped back outside, Miss. The boys are comin' up from the Crocker's, 'long with the sheriff and 'is deputy..."
Katherine doesn't have to wait to hear another word. She's already out the door, Margaret's unrefined voice calling after her as sunlight hits her in the face. She throws a hand over her eyes, peering through finger-slatted shade until she spots her quarry.
Henry's back is to her, standing akimbo at the gold horizon, shouting to the hands out by the corral. She moves to him swiftly. Manuel is leading Walker, a dapple mare, over the crest, towards Henry. Chenoa is beside him with Conquistador and Dusty.
Dusty is her father's starred gray.
And that's when she sees him.
There are three Crocker boys hefting his limp corpse behind Manuel and Chenoa, Bill Crocker moseying on behind with the sheriff and deputy in tow.
They didn't even do him the dignity of putting him on a wagon.
Her hand drops to cover her mouth, bile revisiting her throat at the sight. She's never seen him like this before.
There are two boys at his head, hands under his armpits, and the third at his legs. His body is tall and awkward, and in their young, thin arms he rests awkwardly, like a broken marionette without his strings. His head is lolled to the side, pale and wilted like dying birch in windswept snow, and his right arm is bent over his middle, dead fingers clutching at scarlet threads. His hand is stained red, red, red.
"Daddy."
The lines blur with her heartbeat, scenery jumping and shifting with each aching throb. And that's when her sleeping mind twists the memory, and events so cold and familiar are suddenly different as she sees them.
Henry turns at the sound of her voice, but when he looks at her, it's not Henry's face she's seeing.
He tips his hat at her, with that grizzled chin turned in a frown; dark, cold eyes cutting deep. Outlaw's eyes. Killer's eyes. Ben Wade's eyes.
Her heartbeat rings in her ears.
The boy at her daddy's right shoulder lifts his blonde head, grey-green eyes smirking at her.
"No."
Yes.
Their arms let go, all of a sudden, dropping her father to the dust. His body hits with a sickening thud, cloud of orange dirt curling around his blood-dampened carcass. Bill Crocker smiles, thumbs in his lapels.
"Best I can tell, it was a hunting accident, Miss," says the sheriff. "Stray bullet meant for a buck. Terrible shame."
Stray bullet straight through the heart.
Her eyes move back to that familiar blonde boy, young face grizzled and dirty, eyes wicked and lips curled. Her stomach churns. His stare feels like ice.
"Ain't no one fought for my pa like that."
"Someone should have."
Someone should have.
She can't stand the dark daggers from those familiar blue eyes. It isn't Henry. It isn't her dad. But he means something to her.
That Colt gleams from his side.
She can't stand the dark daggers from those familiar blue eyes.
It wasn't there, but now it is. She doesn't remember picking it up, but it's in her arms. It's not hers, but it's hers. The butt of that old Winchester Model 1885 Low Wall Custom .45 Colt rifle settles into her shoulder.
It doesn't feel good, but it feels right.
"Ain't no one fought for my pa like that."
Someone should have.
You should have.
He's smirking at her.
She can't stand that smirk.
It's only after her cry dies from her throat that she hears the discharge, loud and brash and booming. His body jerks as his feet come out from underneath him, whiplash throwing that blonde hair in his face as he groans. Lead meets bone and tendon and marrow, a sickening crack audible even beyond the echoing blast.
"Careful, I might just get you into trouble. Ruffian and all...or did we decide that I was still an upstanding gentleman?
I can't remember."
And then another.
He stumbles, blood dripping from his parted lips. Gray-green eyes glower for only a moment before they turn soft. Helpless. Betrayed.
She cuts down the other two before his body even has time to hit the ground.
But when it hits, it's never going to get back up.
"...Kate."
"You will. Didn't your papa tell you? Short women? We're tough."
She drops the rifle.
There is blood on her hands.
"Oh, child."
***
She gasps and flies awake, throwing herself back in her chair.
It's midday, and the sun is shining in warm and rich through the windows of her little schoolhouse. She had fallen asleep at her desk again.
"Everything all right, Miss Katherine?"
She jerks her head around to spy Sam near her desk, throwing a cleaning rag in his toolbox as he steps nearer her, brow creased with worry.
"Oh, Sam!" she cries, startled and relieved in equal measure, rising from her seat. "I was having the most dreadful dream!"
"You're all right," he soothes, gathering her into his arms. His dark, calloused fingers work gently through her hair.
She's all right. She's home. It was all a bad dream. Just a bad dream. He's got her.
"I was scared I wouldn't never see you again."
"Now, why would you think a silly thing like that?" he chuckles into her hair, arms snug around her. She chuckles in return.
"Maybe I'm just a silly girl."
"Maybe you're just a tease," replies a voice unlike the gentle rasp of Sam's sweet drawl.
She pulls back and looks up.
Gold teeth glint at her from the corner of his mouth.
"Afternoon, Miss Katherine," Trout Walker sneers, his hands going tight around her arms. "Haven't forgot about me, have you?"
Her soul goes cold.
***
When she finally awakes in her room at Milliways, it's with pounding heart and sweat-dampened sheets. She gasps, rising in bed until she's sitting upright, what covers she hasn't kicked from her body now pooling in her lap. She's struggling for air, blinking in the darkness of the room.
Milliways.
For a long time she just sits there, Trout's leering smirk burned to the backs of her eyes, eyes unfocused on the midnight-tinted sheets at her feet. She's trying to catch her breath, but every inch of her body is trembling.
"Katie."
"Daddy?" her head snaps up, eyes searching the room. There's no one there. Just the deep blanket of blue, moonlight slicing through the blinds.
There's a chill at the back of her neck, as sweat begins to cool in the night air. Slowly, she falls to her side, tucking her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs and staring across the room at an empty chair.
When dawn breaks, she falls asleep again, still curled into a tight ball.
.