Blood and Iron Ch. 03

But why? The question bubbled up, tight and tense and miserable, the same frustrated wondering she'd had so many times of him before. Why goad her so, pretend, why lie to her again? And just when things were going well, when she had thought that they might...it was mad, absurd. It made no sense. And so she simply stared at him before her as they proceeded on, brow low and furrowed with a ferocity of thought. Trying to peer into his soul, to understand, to see what went on beneath the stony coolness of his armor.

Just ahead, James sat slightly slumped atop his horse, his gaze locked sightless to the horizon, buried in the silent meditation of the trail. It came naturally to a steady traveller, a wanderer - closing down the steady chatter of one's inner voice to let the hours flow by as swiftly as they might. Not talking. Not thinking.

He didn't want to think, not now. Didn't want the trouble of reflection, the guilt and ache that it would bring. Hard enough that morning, to snarl and snap and spit at her, to frighten off her offer, the overtures unwelcome of a mercy undeserved. He'd had to reach inside himself to do it, call up his own self-loathing to darken his tone and curl his lip, to remind her of how low a man he was. Of what fate it was that he deserved...perhaps ironic that even in anger she was enchanting. Fine cheeks flushed with crimson fury, fire blazing brilliant in her verdant eyes. She'd had the look of an avenging angel, of Lady Justice with scales and sword, shining glorious and strong. Tempting further still the part of him that saw her as he should not. If she hated him...she should hate him, even if she could not know the reason why. Let her even think he felt the same, if it brought the end with greater ease.

He tried not to look at her, as afternoon wore on into evening, as it came time once more to stop. Each glance was a fresh reminder of his transgression, the beast inside him so eagerly painting her unclothed, delectable and nymphlike in nudity. But the opposite quite plainly did not hold - her gaze seemed almost always to be in his direction, when he did check from the corner of his vision. And not the open glare of hate he might, conflicted, hope; her eyes were quiet, gently probing. Searching in his features as he helped her again set up a fire, as they wordlessly shared another meal of stew and salted biscuits.

It was only after that she spoke, her inquisitive tone abruptly breaking the silence that had held since they rode out from the villa. "Pa." A wince of shame that she should still call him this. Her eyes reaching out for his, still turned stubbornly away. "How come you want me to kill you?"

That turned his head, his gaze to meet her own. Surprise briefly widening his expression, before he locked it down again with the disciplined flatness practiced in years of poker. He had no answer - could only dodge, divert, a query of his own rumbling back low and reproving. "Now what are you thinkin', askin' a question like that?"

She sat loosely on the ground with legs extended at her side, heedless of the dirt on fresh-cleaned jeans. One hand planted on the earth to hold her upright as she watched him, eyes alert, sincere. Her voice firm, dauntless...and yet still somehow tender, a concern it pained him to hear. "You ain't made no try to get away, this whole time." In the darkening of evening and the flickering firelight, her skin had the look of polished bronze, glowing warm and soft. "You spit fire at me when I say how maybe you ain't got to die...and stop just as soon as I take it back. You pitch in, help out, lead the way t'yer own execution." A pause for emphasis, evidence irrefutable; her tone barely deepened with faint accusation. "You think I'm a fool? Can't see somethin' set up so plain?"

James could only shake his head, slow and helpless. Struggling for an answer to the question he hadn't thought she'd ask, the fact he didn't think she'd see. Muttering, "Clear enough you ain't no fool."

"Why?" Adamant, stubborn, she pushed forward with the demand. Her eyes limpid in the looming darkness, glimmering gems of muddy green. "What kind'a man is it, that wants to die?"

"Alice..." Her name was like a sigh, drawn out slow and admonishing as he tried to figure what to say. How to get past this moment, while facing down the gentle coercion of her gaze. It was a long few seconds before his tongue once more moved to speak. "Ain't always about what you want." He tried for strength, for the firmness of instruction...but the faintest touch of pleading still gnawed at his words. "Sometimes it's just about what's got to be."

This was no answer, held no satisfaction. Her lip curled, teeth flared white in the gleam of sunset, firing back without hesitation. "Why's it got to be?"

"Said it yourself, ain't you?" He managed a brief and paltry smile, a faint curve of humor, bleak and bitter. "Liar, cheat, thief, killer." Plus the other crime, the one he dared not name. "Ask a lawman, he'll say I done enough to earn a noose."

"That ain't..." She frowned, and the downward arch of her mouth was a silent weight upon his heart. "Ain't how it works. A man who does wrong don't come out beggin' to be killed on account of it." She sat upwards now, legs awkwardly crossed beneath her as her hands fidgeted in her lap. Suddenly small, vulnerable, looking just upwards at him from the tops of her eyes. "You told me plenty tales about killers and thieves, and the bad guy ain't ever gone along with an execution 'cause it 'had to be done.'"

"They was just stories, Alice." God, but he wished he could reach out to her. Comfort her, clasp in his hand the gentle beauty of her cheek... "Real life, people act a bit more complicated."

Moments drifted by with her staring silent at the ground, and he began to hope that perhaps this was enough, that she'd accepted his logic. His excuse. But before he could grow too heartened, her head shook, and her gaze snapped up again fierce and enlivened. "No. No, it don't make sense. If you was ready to die, you had thirteen years to get it done yourself...ain't no reason you had to wait for me." A pained suspicion itching in her voice. "Hell, you could get it done now, if you was really so inclined."

All he could manage was a wan smile, flickering briefly on his lips. "Don't figure I could pull it off too well, without a piece."

He meant it as no more than humor, one more small and bitter joke. He did not expect her to reach down to her holster, pull out the revolver that she'd deployed so effectively at their reunion. To flip it over in her hand, offering him the handle with a look of challenge in her eye.

There was little choice but to take it. Once-practiced fingers sliding round the grip, closing on smooth ivory and cold steel, remembering the feeling of a gun in his hand. Such a sense of power it had carried, once. Keeping cowed a whole bank full of people with Miller and the rest. Driving back the posse that gave chase after, a few men hit even at a couple hundred paces. Now...as Alice let go, his hand trembled with the weight of the revolver, wavering so badly he couldn't have hit a target ten feet away. Aiming at himself, of course, would be rather easier...

His gaze flickered back up, glancing into eyes still intense and staring. A faint, sardonic smile playing once more at the corners of his lips. "You reckon all this was just a ruse? Trick, to get this iron off ya?"

She didn't flinch. Hardly even reacted, a tiny shake of her head, words intoned low and flat. "No. No, I don't reckon so."

He grunted back, shrugged minutely. Tried to swallow the anxious uncertainty building in his throat. She was right. He should do it now, take charge and end it all right here. Maybe he'd be missing out on those last respects to Molly...but it wasn't like she'd much appreciate them, anyhow. And maybe it'd be better, too, if Alice weren't the one to pull the trigger, if she didn't have to worry about regrets or second thoughts. If it were just - done, his sins expunged with an offering of lead, and she now free to live her life outside his shadow.

It was only with difficulty, with a twinge of old pain, that he lifted the gun above his shoulder. Touched the barrel to his temple, the metal deathly cold against his skin. An inhalation before him, his daughter's gaze growing wide with surprise, miscalculation - he ignored it. He had to ignore it, had to do this. It was for the best. Not like he'd been living for much these last years, anyhow. Just hanging on, playing one more hand of a losing game. A wise man knows when to fold, when to leave the table...his thumb moved. The hammer clicked into place.

"Pa..." It was a staring, stricken whisper. All the color drained from her features, her head shaking slight and swift in horrified refusal. Skin almost ashen in the firelight...even like this, she looked so beautiful. Paled lips barely parted, searching for some unknown word. Hazel eyes shocked fully open, sclera visible all the way around. Her scattering of freckles brought captivating to contrast in this blanching white. So fine a shape of woman. If he were another man, a younger man...

His eyes clamped furiously shut, a wave of self-disgust sweeping through his soul. There it was again, the strongest reason of all for why this had to be. He was no kind of father, no kind of man at all with such thoughts inside his head. A beast instead, a wild dog, better put down than let to roam...it all was nonsense, anyhow. Even if he had not been her kin, she deserved far better a man than he had ever been. Virtue all but written in her features - the strength she'd shown, the determination just to find him. Her courage, her honesty. Not just of words, but of manner, direct and straightforward, refusing all deception. And all that she was, she was in spite of him - transcending his example, the weight of his blood. He could do nothing to help her. His presence could only corrupt.

His finger sat heavy on the trigger, awaiting its command. The metal now warmer with his touch. It wouldn't hurt. Not for long, anyway - the briefest moment's agony as the bullet smashed into his skull, pulping flesh and bone to a splatter of red. Then just...what lay beyond. He couldn't hold much aspiration for the higher place, after how he'd lived, but at least he'd find out if all those preachers had been right about the other. A lake of fire, of brimstone, of torment unending - or so they always said. Such accounts had always struck him as a shade unjust. Perhaps there would be only darkness, a sleep from which he never woke. His finger tightened. There'd be a kind of peace in that.

"Don't..." The word was like an anguished prayer, high and pleading. His eyes cracked open again, looking into hers now shimmering with the lightest sheen of moisture. One small hand reached out as though to stop him. Absurd - she'd called for this, demanded it. And rightly so; his life seemed but one long regret, an endless tally of his wrongs. Better just to cut it short, pay the penance for his sins. Justice, if such a thing existed.

But that note in her voice, of pain, of imploring...it stuck with him, echoed in his mind. Joined with the endless, empty chorus of instinct, that incessant demand deep inside, to live, to live, to live, no matter what it cost. Always pushing, that pointless struggle for another day, another hour, even if they would be no different from the thousands that had gone before. It stood against him, stubborn and thoughtless as a child, fighting this resolution. And now alongside it, the image of half-formed tears in muddy eyes. If she would weep above his corpse...

There was a quiet click as he released the hammer, lowered the gun into his lap. Staring dark and silent at the smoothly sweeping floral pattern engraved into the polished barrel. His fingers running slow at the light tracery of petals, vines, thorns...tired. So tired, every drop of energy inside him evaporated like water in the noonday sun. "It's a fine-lookin' piece." He spoke flat, low. His gaze kept still towards the ground has he held back out the gun for her to take, not willing now to face her eyes.

The pistol she swiftly grabbed, stuffed once more into its holster. But she ignored entirely the diversion of his last few words, her voice emerging shaken, trembling with a horror just averted. "I didn't think you were really gonna do it."

Faint sarcasm, malign and sour on his tongue. "Well, seein' as how I didn't, I'd reckon you was right." Pushing himself upward, weary to his feet, as judgement snarled in his head. Coward. It could have been done, over, solved. All his troubles ended with one little explosion, a single flash of light. All his sins...he had to withdraw, to escape, to disengage. To step now from the fire, out into the deepening twilight, stars coming into view as the sky kept up its fade to black. It hurt too much to see her. Hurt to stand beside her, to feel her presence on his skin, knowing what he was. Like some unholy creature presented with the Cross, the filth inside him burning at her beauty, at her goodness. "Guess I'll have to wait 'til Anavio. Less'n you want to do it now, yourself." A muttering, as much into the night as back to her.

A bare second's wait before her answer came. Rebellious, though tight still with distress. "I won't."

Staring sightless into the growing gloom, James permitted himself a brief, despairing exhalation. Of course. He'd feared as much after that morning, and her upset of moments prior. "Hope you ain't backin' out on me, now." Still not looking in her direction. His voice low, insistent, reminding her gently of what she had to do. "I ain't the one set this up, remember? Was you that said what's got to be."

"I won't," she repeated. Stubborn words little helping to conceal the emotion in her voice. He could hear her rising to her feet, past the quiet crackle of the fire. His back stiffening as he felt her approach, soft footsteps in the dirt behind. Mind straining to place her, to see her there, head tilted just upward to gaze imploring at the back of his greying scalp. "I ain't gonna do it. And if that makes me a liar..." She paused, swallowed. "I don't care. I don't give a damn. A girl ain't supposed to kill her own pa."

He turned, then. Ached to see how close she stood, a scant two feet away, staring up at him with eyes so deep and expressive. Shining like her soul, strength and vulnerability blended paradoxically with one another in her gaze, in the obstinate tightness of her jaw. Her delicate neck exposed beneath, slim, soft, so finely curved...it was hard to rouse his tongue to speak, to shape words stern and serious. "Alice...we both know I ain't no kind of father." A faint shake of his head, emphasis for this dismissal. "Just some no-good louse happened to lay down with your ma. Proper father sure as shootin' wouldn't run off to rob a bank when you was just a little girl, wouldn't hide hisself away for years and years." He braved to look her in the eye. "You ain't got no obligations to me."

"Ain't about obligation," she whispered back, fierce, urgent, pleading. Stepping closer now - god, she stood so close before him. He could smell her, her skin, her hair, the faint cinnamon spice of femininity. He could see her as she had been that morning, fresh from her bath; bare, glorious, beautiful. His hands shaking at his sides, wishing they could reach out to her, wrap tight around her body, hold her close against him...she spoke again, the lump audible in her throat. "You're the only pa I got. Only man I..." Her swallow was as compelling as any sound he'd ever heard. "It tore me right in two when you run off. Hurt that just went on and on, like a hole cut in me that wouldn't never heal up. Bleedin' me dry, drop by drop." Her chin gently quivered as she looked at him, lips trembling between pain and stoic strength. "Only thing I could think, only thing kept me goin' was tryin' to find you. Thinkin' that if I did, it'd finally fill that hole." Her eyes glistened damply with reflected moonlight, voice raw and thick. "Pa, if you died, if I...I figure I'd feel all that again. And this time, I wouldn't have nowhere left to search."

Nothing. James had no ready response to this, no prepared rebuttal - could only stand there silent, solemn, nearly overwhelmed. Looking at her, at the earnesty compelling in her expression, at the honesty of tears unhidden from his gaze. Feeling the answering heat and sting at the corner of his own eyes. In this display of pain she seemed again his little girl, despite that she was grown...and how he wished that he could reach out now to her, hold her in his arms. Wipe away her tears and tell the lies a father has to tell, that he would never leave, that he'd protect her always, that he would never let an ounce of pain to touch upon her soul. Three promises already broken, shattered into sand. It was all that he could do instead to gently shake his head, to answer, his gruff tones taken by a husky depth. "You got too soft a heart, little rose."

Sudden inhalation, chagrin, realizing what he'd said. He hadn't meant to call her that, remembered her earlier admonition. Regretted the words as they left his lips, as he saw her stiffen before him, sharp and aching. Her lovely eyes clamped shut, forcing free the tears within to trickle slowly down her cheek, tiny droplets in her lashes glittering like diamond. But he had scarce begun to think of an apology when she moved, stepped forward. Erased the space between them as she leaned into him, laid her head wordless and tentative upon his chest.

In this tableau, his first reaction was hardly more than shock, surprise. Uncertain at this new crisis, at the all-too-pleasant tingle of her body lightly touched to his. Her posture stiff and anxious against him, arms doubled back upon her abdomen. A long few frozen moments before he noticed how she held her breath...and then there was no room or time to wonder. She hurt, and he could only try to help. Arms lifting from his sides to slip gentle round her back, her waist, cautiously reassuring. Holding her there against him, as comforting as he was able, as tenderly as he knew how. A slight and warm embrace against the fall of night, until at last she took a breath. Perhaps a breath - it sounded more a gasp, a sob, high and broken in his shirt. He just squeezed her softly, rubbing soothing at her back.

"Pa..." It was a dozen seconds later that she tried to speak, once she had the breath to spare. Words still thick, anguished, straining through her throat. Her hands now drifted half around his back, furthest fingers on his spine. "Pa, I..."

"Shh," he murmured back, softly chiding. Cradling her close, as she trembled against him. "Easy now, s'all right. You ain't got to say nothing." One hand still encircling her waist, the other buried in her hair, clasped warm at the back of her scalp. Playing slow in messy crimson locks, trying not to take too great a pleasure in the feeling of her cheek upon his breast, her subtle curves along his body.

But she was not denied. Stirring now against him, her head turned up to look into his eyes - his own heart wrenching at the tempest of emotion he saw gathered in her gaze, a ship in stormy seas struggling to anchor. Reaching out to him, pleading, longing. Fingers tightened on his back as her voice came forth again, almost broken with intensity. "I love you, pa." Fine lips, pert and pink, hugging every syllable, and her eyes set staring after, praying that the words found friendly quarter.

James did not, could not trust himself to speak. Had not imagined that he would ever hear again these words from her - they hummed in his ear like the music of the spheres, a buzz of quiet bliss borne down sublimely to his soul. Warmth blooming brightly outward from his heart, an ache as though it were expanding in his chest...and a smile for an answer, his hand sliding round to grasp gently at her cheek. His thumb stroking at that lovely skin, trailing through the slight dampness of her tears.