scurlock | oom: room 25 / later outside

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oom: room 25 / later outside

After taking care of his morning chores and the conversation that came with it, Doc leads Katherine up to his room, box of donuts and two cups carefully held in his hands.

Once he's opened the door and they've stepped inside, the first thing she'll notice is that he's changed the layout of the room a bit, and his bed has been shoved up against the wall, his desk moved closer to the door. There's a new couch by the windows, with an end table that wasn't there before as well.

"Figured if I was gonna be livin' here I might as well make it less like a hotel room," he offers, by way of explanation, as he closes the door behind them with his foot, but doesn't bother to lock it.

There are books stacked on the desk, but not poetry or literature. History of Medieval England, for one. Several medical texts. There's an empty glass (and half empty bottle of Laphroaig) sitting on the desk as well. Scattered pages of notes. Half finished poems. Nothing but scratched sketches from a bored and frustrated writer's hand.

His bed is roughly made (sheets and blankets pulled up but not tucked in) and there are several other books on the side where another person would sleep. A hard bound selection of Keats is tucked in with a leather bound journal or two.

She'll see, tacked to the wall between the bed and desk, a piece of paper with the poem Jack quoted to him at a Happy Hour a few weeks ago, handwritten in black ink.

On the dresser, there are still the two folded paper cranes, one pink and one brown, but a third, a bright orange (like canned peaches) has joined them. The cask in the corner is covered with a towel, sword and bow and rifle leaning against the wall. There are coat hooks on the wall beside the door -- that black duster, as well as his tan one, and a woolen cloak, hooded and green, that is suitable for hiding among the trees and leaves of Sherwood hang on the pegs.

The footlocker at the end of the bed is covered in cloth, and that sword (not the practice blade, but a finer, sharper weapon) is resting on it, polishing cloth beside it.

Doc crosses the room to the couch and coffeetable, and sets the contents of his hands down on the surface before he leans over to shove one of the windows open, pulling the curtains over it to allow for the morning breeze.

"Sorry 'bout the mess," he offers, before he motions for her to sit while he pulls his coat off, the flannel jacket ending up on the end of the bed.

She'll also notice the end of his bed is missing something familiar.

(His gunbelt is nowhere to be seen.)

It's really not all that horrible, but it's more 'lived in' than she's seen it before.

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She notices the absence of the gunbelt right away, but almost immediately thereafter her eyes fall upon the collection of weaponry in the room--some pieces different from the ones she's seen before--and feels a little disheartened.

The room is different and strange, and as she steps over the threshold and enters, she feels almost wary, and more uncomfortable than ever before.

The remodeled room throws into sharp relief that this is not a hotel room; Not just a stop between real worlds. This is his space, and right now it is more lived in than ever before, rumpled and haphazard and reeking with discontent.

(Or is that alcohol?)

(Or is there a difference?)

She quietly unbuttons her long, red jacket, and sweeps it off her shoulders as she gazes about. It ends up on Doc's bed, next to the flannel jacket.

She settles carefully and nervously on one end of the new couch, eying the items on the coffee table, but not touching anything just yet.

Her stomach is turning with nerves, and she's only partially sure of why.

It's like walking on eggshells, that's what it is, as he unbuttons the cuffs of that oxford shirt and then rolls them up to his elbows, moving through his space as he tries to think of how to start this conversation.

He idly straightens a few papers on the desk, and then returns to the couch, sitting next to her and raking a hand through his hair before he glances at her.

"I know it's my fault, but I hate this," he admits.

And by 'this', he means the uncomfortable silence between them.

"So I'm gonna start by apologizin', again," he continues, as he crosses his legs and leans back a little, flexing his left arm out and tucking it behind his head. The muscles in his bicep twinge a bit with the effort, but that's why he's stretching.

"And then I reckon I should start from somewhere near the beginnin', except I'm not quite sure what topic you'd like me to begin with," he says, quietly. There's a vague sense of uncertainty in his voice, but it's covered by the fact that he's going to tell her the truth. Regardless of what it is she asks about.

Doc looks at his right hand a moment, his left out of sight (he's hiding that scar, subconsciously) with his fingers threaded into his hair, before he looks back up at her and offers her a smile.

"So I reckon...just ask me anythin' and I'll talk 'bout it."

She nods almost imperceptibly, her eyes lowered to her hands as her fingers fuss nervously with each other.

"I apologize, too. For my part," she says quietly. Lord knows the situation isn't ideal, but she probably could have handled it better. Now, months have passed on her end of the door, and she has no idea what to do around Doc anymore.

Gingerly, she raises her eyes to his.

"What should I ask you?" she asks softly. "Are there any more lies you gotta come clean for? Everything you told me about Tunstall's ranch and Billy, was that the truth? Your parents--did you tell me the truth about them? About your brothers? Tulane? New York?"

She licks her dry lips, shakily reaching for that tea now.

"Was everything just a story you told to amuse me? ...Or to amuse yourself?"

"Was never a story to amuse myself, Kate," he says, firmly.

Doc leans back a little and stares at the ceiling as he speaks. It's easier to focus on the ceiling that it is to focus on her eyes on him. He hates it, he really, really does.

"Everything I told you about my parents, my family, that's all the truth. I really went to school at Tulane, for medicine, and I left after stealin' a horse and tack and a gun, few hundred dollars from a bank. Only bank I've ever robbed. I went into rustlin' sheep and cows."

He leans forward then, to get the coffee.

"I tried stealin' a handful of cattle from John but got caught. This was before the Santa Fe Ring ever got to the point where it needed lookin' after. Richard Brewer was already working for him, and I was the second. We gathered up...John called us the," and his voice takes on a light British accent as he tells the story. "The flotsam and jetsam, the dregs of society."

He smiles a little at the thought.

"We were his boys. John made certain we had a proper education, room and board, in exchange for workin' his stock and keepin' and eye on things. We put together the Regulators long before Billy ever came around."

A pause.

"After the Lincoln County War was over, I went back east with Yen. We were married and about six months after that, we found out she was with child. Wasn't easy. Folk don't take kindly to a white man and a Chinese woman walkin' down the street together."

Katherine listens quietly and respectfully as he explains everything, not interrupting him.

He started out as a common criminal. A thief and a rogue.

She has always known that there is a dirty underbelly to the glamorous cowboy lifestyle, but it's something you easily overlook every time you read a nickel book calling these delinquents modern day Robin Hoods and soldiers against stiff-necked governments.

God, this country needs a hero so damn bad...

She looks at Doc in a newer light. He seems to shed age all of a sudden, even though he hasn't got much to spare, and she can plainly see an eighteen-year-old kid with a naughty spark in his young eyes. Much too young. Robbing banks and stealing horses.

But then John polished him up. Made him respectable. And...

...her jaw drops a bit. "Your wife is from the Orient?"

She imagines the two of them together, and that little boy with too-blue eyes that had been plaguing Katherine all these months, now peers at her with bottomless, dark orbs under a mop of silken hair.

"Her parents used to run a laundry out in Silver City," he drinks from the coffee a moment and contemplates. "Murphy had a shirt ruined, just an accident...but he requested their daughter -- Yen-Sun -- as payment. Bought her for the price of a shirt."

Doc shakes his head.

"I don't...I'm not even going to..."

He sighs.

"Murphy kept her, claiming he was her 'guardian'," and the disgust in his tone isn't something he throws lightly, ever, but this is one of those occasions. He's not going to go into the details. Yen never told him. He never asked.

Another sip of coffee, and another nod.

"But yes, she is. Even in New York City, with all the countries and languages...there are still barriers. It's disheartening. It's hard. The man..."

And something about the inflection in his speech changes, just a little.

"The man she was with when I went back to New York City...he was Chinese. They looked better together than we ever did. They didn't get stared at."

Katherine doesn't need the details. And she, too, will never ask for them.

"That's revolting!" she hisses, her voice barely working. She has to squeeze her eyes shut and look away from him, swallowing a few times, truly disgusted by the situation.

She doesn't say anything else. Really, there's nothing else to say.

She thinks of Sam. All that hard work he did, and he still isn't allowed in the schoolhouse for class.

She's quiet for a bit after he finishes, chancing a look at him again. Gingerly she opens her eyes, and her eyes are filled with deep concern.

"What about your son?"

Doc's quiet, a long moment, his eyes on hers before he shakes his head, just barely and looks down.

"He's got her hair," he finally manages. "Dark as coal, and his eyes...they're darker then mine are, but they ain't brown. Sort of...a real dark green. Mine are more grey."

He rolls the cup between his palms, absently.

"She didn't have him with her when I saw them together. Jonathan was probably with her parents - they run a laundry on the lower east side. Yen worked there while I was teachin', just to help them out, and she could keep him with her. Sometimes they'd watch him."

"Jonathan," she repeats, as if trying out the name. There's a ghost of a smile at her lips, and she nods slightly in understanding: after Tunstall, no doubt.

She sips carefully at her tea and then peers down into the dark liquid, watching the light refract off of it.

"Are you... are you going to try to see him?" she asks.

"I don't know if I can. The papers reported me shot and killed," he explains. "Of course there was no body for them to find when they rode up the next day so they were thinkin' the Apaches got to me first."

He's dead.

Sort of.

Doc thinks for a moment, before he has another sip of coffee.

"Jonathan William Scurlock," he says, quietly. "It's a mouthful but it's...it's a strong name. Good name," he adds. "Good men."

"But you ain't--"

Her eyes flash to him, and then suddenly she's flushed with embarrassment, and she drops them back to her tea again. "But you aren't dead."

It's one simple fact that has been burdening her mind with anything but simple questions ever since the night she left the infirmary. He's not dead. Even if everyone in his world thinks he is, he's not.

Doesn't that make him married, still, under the eyes of God?

"Jonathan William Scurlock," she murmurs under her breath, breaking herself away from all these unwelcome thoughts. "Jonathan... after Mr. Tunstall?"

It's not really a question. "William..."

This one gives her pause. After a moment's pondering, she looks at him with no small measure of surprise.

"Billy?" she asks.

"Sort of."

Doc explains what he means. "When I first came to Milliways it was fresh off the gunfight at McSween's," he explains. "Yen and I hadn't made it to New York City, yet. I was here awhile...I met Will. It's for both of them. Will and Billy."

He sets the cup of coffee down on the table, thinking on that.

Pals.

Let's finish the game.

"I'm not dead but I can't go back, not to what I had before," he admits.

His hand goes to his stomach without him realizing, and he rubs gently over the shirt, itching at the fresh and healing skin, as he thinks on that. They had finished the game.

A slight smile, tinged with bitterness, briefly flashes over his features before it vanishes.

"Suppose it's God's way of sayin' 'I told you so.'."

Katherine nods, her features relaxing a bit. "He seems like a good man. Will, I mean. I'm not... I'm not sure what I think of Billy just yet."

It's funny how people's ideas of what a hero is changes over time.

'Billy The Kid,' Fastest Gun in the West, Fearsome Outlaw, and murderer of almost every man who called him Friend.

She watches Doc's hand as it rubs at the concealed wound in his stomach, feeling her own stomach churn.

"What do you mean?" she asks softly.

"I hope he gets back here," Doc says honestly. "He doesn't know I'm still alive."

Plus he kind of wants to hit him. Or hug him. He's not quite sure which, and probably won't until he sees him face to face.

Then he looks at her, a moment, before he looks across the room.

"I know He ain't one to say it," he begins. "But reckon it's payback for all the things I've done. Thievin' and lyin', drink' and the like. For all the things that happened in Begma. For all the wrongs I've done here. I'm a God fearin' man but I ain't a good Christian, haven't been in a long time."

He considers something.

"Hell, he's probably mad at me for never gettin' married in a church, too."

She studies him, carefully, brow furrowed as he speaks.

"Payback? You mean losing your wife and son?"

She shakes her head and sighs, and part of her wants to bridge the gap between them and place a comforting hand on his. She doesn't, of course, but that doesn't make the desire any less there.

"Doc, He doesn't work like that," she says softly.

"Though," she begins, and her eyes narrow very slightly in confusion. "What... W-where did you get married?"

"I know He doesn't but I ain't..." Doc thinks back to his conversation with Kate Warner from awhile ago, and what he can remember past the taste of the scotch is a conversation about faith. "I ain't sure what I believe in, anymore."

He sounds tentative when he speaks, like he's fearful of what she'll say if he discusses his struggle with his faith and she doesn't like what she hears.

"There's a lot of tensions startin' up with the Chinese. Folk in New York don't look kindly on a white man and a Chinese woman gettin' married, not t'mention there was no way I was about to put my Christian name on a license, risk gettin' recognized. They would've known who I was and thought she was nothin' but a two-bit..."

That sentence cuts off sharply.

"Forgive my tongue."

Doc's not ashamed of his marriage. (But he's worried about what she'll think.)

"One of the temples," he says, to finally answer the question. "Was just us an' her parents an' the priest of sorts."

"A--"

A pagan wedding.

She doesn't say it, but she thinks it. And she hates herself a little for doing so.

'We're all equal under the eyes of God. You remember that.'

She shakes her head, looking back into her tea, when he asks her to forgive him.

"I understand. You were... careful."

She's quiet, just as afraid of what Doc will think of how she views his faith if she says too much, so she leaves it at that.

She's not really sure what to say or think, anyhow.

This situation is just so messed up.

It really is.

Doc swallows, and his eyes are on her carefully as he settles back into the couch again, trying to think of what to say, and he crosses his legs again and glances down at his hands.

"I'm tryin'," he finally says. "I'm really, really tryin', it's just so damn hard to believe in anythin' when you're barely hangin' on. John was always so strong, teachin' us what was right, and I've read the Book cover to cover since I've been back. I'm tryin'."

A hard swallow.

"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."

He pauses.

"I just...we did it to ourselves, but there was no way we was gonna let them get away with killin' John. No way in Hell."

He's not sure why he's telling her this. Why now? Why here?

"No way in Hell."

Katherine's stormy eyes refocus on Doc as he speaks.

It's just so damn hard to believe in anythin' when you're barely hangin' on.

If this was a few months back, she would have scooched herself closer to him and cupped his face in her hands.

But this wasn't a few months back.

"Doc," she entreats him, setting her cup down on the coffee table and turning to face him.

"You know how often I thought about goin' down to the Crocker ranch with my daddy's rifle and takin' one of them boys for my loss?" Her eyes are glassy as she speaks, jaw set. "You did what you thought was right. Justice, for a good man, remember? Ain't no one fought for my pa like that."

She looks down, gathering her composure as best she can. "Now, I don't know what God thinks of me when I entertain thoughts like that. I don't know what that says about my heart, knowin' every time I saw them boys I barely kept myself from violence."

'You'll learn, Katie, that some things is just worth fightin' for. Some people are worth fightin' for.'

"But," she swallows hard, "I can't believe He would take your family, just because you got in over your head.

"I can't believe that."

"Someone should've," Doc says. "Hell, I would if I knew you wouldn't hate me for it, ain't right when a man gets cut down for no good reason," he adds, before he pulls in a deep breath.

There's an angry fire burning in his eyes that she'll catch, before he swallows hard and closes them, rolling his neck around to try and get rid of a little bit of tension. When he glances at her again, that fire's still there, though he looks away to keep from catching her gaze as he continues.

"What we did was the right thing to do."

He sets his jaw, slightly.

"You know, I can't even tell you how many men I've killed," his voice is even, almost thoughtful as he considers the number in his head with a soft shake. His hair falls slightly into his eyes, and for a moment he's almost...sad. But it's gone before she can blink.

And that fire's still smoldering, deep in his voice.

"And I'm not sayin' you should've done a thing with that rifle, Kate," he tells her. "But someone should have. I don't care what the Book says 'bout killin', it ain't right to let men like Murphy and those boys get away with the things they do."

"I wouldn't hate you, Doc," she whispers, and the way she says it makes a hidden message clear:

I don't hate you, Doc.

It hangs between them a moment in silence, her eyes still downcast.

"To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence," she murmurs, remembering the scripture she read to herself every night for months all that time back. "Their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left."

Her soft blue eyes flick up to his face as he tries to recall the number of men he's killed. She thinks she catches an angry fire there, burning in his eyes, and it makes her tremble a little.

"What goes around comes around, suppose you could say," she remarks, wrapping her arms around herself. She shakes her head, trying to catch his gaze.

"Don't mean it will happen the way we think it should, but neither does it mean you're cursed for the actions you've taken."

It's what she'd like to believe, at least.

Doc lets that phrase roll around in his head a few moments.

but neither does it mean you're cursed for the actions you've taken

Silently.

It takes him a minute to bring his temper under control, and then another to fully grasp the meaning of the verse. He doesn't recognize it, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Of course it's true.

I wouldn't hate you Doc.

He catches the double meaning to her words. She doesn't hate him. She has every right known to man to hate him. She has every right. But she doesn't. She doesn't hate him.

"I think you're right about that," he says. "We can't know how it'll happen or when, or even why sometimes...but it will. We have to trust that it will."

A pause.

"Sometimes you just have to be willing to take the step."

Pull the trigger.

She watches him quietly, there from the other side of the couch.

It's like there's a gaping chasm between them, it's bottomless maw this intimidating stretch of dead space keeping them apart.

But down a ways, yet too far to reach but there, is a rope bridge to the other side.

She leans her head against the couch, eyes still on him. She looks so small, arms around her body, as she sits there peering at him with honest eyes.

"Sometimes."

"More often than not."

He scrubs his hands over his face to try and regain his train of thought from earlier, but all he was doing was answering her questions, so it's not a big surprise to him when he comes up empty.

"I'm a real piece of work."

Doc sighs, though it's not all that sad. He decides to steer away from that topic.

"What else did you want to know about?"

She doesn't comment on that first statement.

Instead, she chances a very small smile, and agrees with him. "Yes, you are."

She sighs softly, looking back to her tea. It's almost too far to consider reaching for.

"But you're nothing I can't handle."

She considers his question carefully, quietly, running her thumbs over the rim of her styrofoam cup.

"All this time... away from home. In this place." She's thinking out loud. "Was I the only one?"

The tone of her voice makes it clear she's gone back to the original subject.

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