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oom: stables, outside milliways
It's been more than a few days since the last time Doc actually spoke to Katherine - and the way that they left each other has been biting at his insides, even through the battle and everything else that's gone on since the night he came back in half-frozen to death. Since then, he's gotten the sneaking feeling that she's trying to avoid him. He doesn't quite blame her, though, given the conversation and everything that happened that night - but that doesn't mean that not talking to her isn't driving him nuts.
The morning that Doc makes his way down the stables is cold. There's a fine layer of snow pack on the ground, and his boots crunch against the icy covering as he makes his way out. Normally, on Wednesdays, he sleeps in and doesn't make his way down to the stables until the afternoon.
Not today.
Part of it (him being up so early and headed down the path) is the fact that he hasn't been sleeping very well, and that he wants to work to get his mind off things. Part of it is the fact that he's hoping to catch her.
They need to talk - he knows that much.
He's wearing the lined flannel jacket, thick pants, and boots, with his scarf around his neck and a knit hat pulled own on his head, covering the messy swatch of blond hair. His hands are tucked deep into his pockets, fingers curled into fists inside wool-lined leather gloves. As he nears the stables, he wonders just what it is he's going to say if she is here, this morning.
Doc's thinking on that when he rounds the corner and ducks into the side door, entering the barn.
She's standing a distance away, brushing down a horse - Duncan - and both of them look as if they've been out for awhile in the weather. There's a ruddy bite to her skin from the cold, and a good lather of sweat on the horse's skin, which she's working on.
He nods his head. "Mornin'."
He greets her, simply, as he moves to his desk to pull off his hat.
The morning that Doc makes his way down the stables is cold. There's a fine layer of snow pack on the ground, and his boots crunch against the icy covering as he makes his way out. Normally, on Wednesdays, he sleeps in and doesn't make his way down to the stables until the afternoon.
Not today.
Part of it (him being up so early and headed down the path) is the fact that he hasn't been sleeping very well, and that he wants to work to get his mind off things. Part of it is the fact that he's hoping to catch her.
They need to talk - he knows that much.
He's wearing the lined flannel jacket, thick pants, and boots, with his scarf around his neck and a knit hat pulled own on his head, covering the messy swatch of blond hair. His hands are tucked deep into his pockets, fingers curled into fists inside wool-lined leather gloves. As he nears the stables, he wonders just what it is he's going to say if she is here, this morning.
Doc's thinking on that when he rounds the corner and ducks into the side door, entering the barn.
She's standing a distance away, brushing down a horse - Duncan - and both of them look as if they've been out for awhile in the weather. There's a ruddy bite to her skin from the cold, and a good lather of sweat on the horse's skin, which she's working on.
He nods his head. "Mornin'."
He greets her, simply, as he moves to his desk to pull off his hat.
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She will not cry. Not again.
"I should have listened to Ben Wade."
Her voice is choked and unsteady, too quiet to hear unless he's close.
Her fingers curl into a half-fist along that stall wall, and she bends just so that she looks for a moment like she might collapse.
"I am so stupid."
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"Kate?"
Doc reaches one hand out on instinct, but it doesn't get far from his hip before he stops, not sure if she even wants him to touch her.
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"You know, all this time I thought..."
She exhales sharply, head still shaking. Turning in a tight circle, her arms go around her body, hugging that coat around her breast. She stops when she's facing him, but it takes a moment before her eyes lift to catch his.
They're glassy, but there is a wry little smile on her face.
"You're right," she concedes. "It isn't fair of me to tell you how you're feeling. Obviously, the only person who knows that is you. Only you."
Her eyes go to her boots, and she kicks the heels absently to shake off mud and hay.
"Never me," she adds quietly.
She feels left out, suddenly like this relationship that had shown so much hope and promise will never grow deeper. He has locked her out, and she's seeing the walls he's put up around his heart for the very first time, like an unclimbable barrier he won't ever take down.
"I just wish you had been honest with me, if you didn't trust me," she murmurs, forcing strength into her wavering voice. "Instead of making me think like I was a part of your life."
She tries to brush past him.
"You wasted both our time."
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"Kate."
He looks down to her, from the side, before he shifts his body, his hand moving to her elbow to turn her slightly towards him.
"The reason I went back to New York City was so that I could say goodbye to my family, so that I could allow myself to move on, and so that I wouldn't have them hangin' over us like some dark cloud on the horizon I'm tryin' to ignore. I never would have felt like I was bein' fair to you if I hadn't gone back and gotten that peace in my heart for myself. That was why I went back and that was why I walked away, outta that alley, and why I rode west out to Liberty."
His voice is even, and calm, almost resolute because he is telling her the truth about this.
"I told you I made it out to Liberty just fine. I left New York City and I never looked back, not once down that road. I needed to do that for myself, put that behind me. But I also needed to do that for us."
There's still an 'us', ain't there?
Doc pulls in a quiet breath and exhales it through his nose in a gentle sigh.
"I wish I had been honest with you as well, I really do. But I wasn't and I do apologize for that. You are a part of my life, Kate. You're more important to me than anyone in the world, more important that New York City, more important than Billy gettin' out of that jail or not, more important than anyone, you hear me?" His tone is nowhere near forceful, but it's firm.
"I love you more than I've ever loved anyone, and I'm still gettin' used to what that feels like but I will get there, swear to God."
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She slowly agrees to be moved, not stopping until she can feel the solid wood jamb against her shoulder blades. She glances up to his face, her eyes still cold and hurt, but she doesn't look up for long.
"I don't care about that," she interjects sharply, when he begins to explain why he went to New York. "I wanted you to go, Doc. They're your family, and I think you should have seen them. I'm not mad you went. I'm not."
She goes quiet as he continues, letting the protest die in her throat.
'For us.'
'You're more important to me than anyone in the world.'
'I love you more than I've ever loved anyone.'
Her heart is raging, and for a minute all she can do is breathe, shrinking under the burn of his gaze. She squeezes her eyes shut to the tears she still stubbornly refuses to let escape.
She shakes her head. She shakes, and shakes it, the only protest she can muster while she tries to get her emotions under control.
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She headstrong and tough as nails and she's Texan, but underneath that...she's still a woman. So while he knows she could kick his ass in a heartbeat...he still cares.
"I know you're not mad at me for goin' back," he assures her. "I know you're angry with me for not tellin' you I went. I know that."
He's still not pressing.
"I want to make this work," he continues. "I'm just not sure what to say or do to prove that to you, right this moment. Somehow I get the feelin' you don't want to hear me 'pologize a million times."
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"If you really wanted to make this work," she tries again, voice so quiet -- but at least it's even. "You wouldn't shut me out."
Her hands go between their torsos, and waver, like she's not sure whether she wants to beat on his chest or embrace him. After a few tries, they settle tentatively on his breast as she tries to explain.
"If you were doing this for us, I should have been at least included in what was going on. But I wasn't. That tells me that deep down, you still haven't let me in. I don't think you trust me completely, Doc. And if you don't trust me completely... you can't love me completely."
Her face falls, and so do her hands. She feels vaguely ill.
"I don't think you did it for us. I think you did it for you. Because I'm just... not there, yet. Am I? It's still your life, and my life; not our life.
"That's why you weren't ready to talk about it with me, but were, apparently, readily able to talk to your friends. I'm not there yet."
In your heart.
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Doc reaches for her hands and takes them gently, and looks down at them. His are calloused and rough, inside those gloves he's wearing, her own slight and smooth, tiny in his grasp.
"I want...I know we can make this work. And I...I'm ready t'make this our life. Otherwise I wouldn't have asked y'to marry me the other night," he admits. "I would have said we should've taken it slower, but I..."
He shakes his head.
"I do shut people out, I know that, but it's hard for me t'get used to pullin' those walls down. I'm tryin', swear to the Lord I'm tryin'. I want us to be together."
Doc swallows, to steady his voice and keep his composure. His hands are still shaking, just a little, but he smooths the thumb of his glove over the back of her hand slowly.
"It's just that I'm scared. I trust y'not to hurt me, Kate, I just...I'm tryin'. I'm more honest with you than I am with anyone else out in my world. The only reason I told Jack about it was because he's like...he's like a brother t'me, family pretty much."
His eyes are still focused on their hands.
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"And I'm not."
The words hang there a minute, caught in a blanket of utter silence. She lifts her eyes from their hands to his face, and smiles so very sadly.
"It's okay," she whispers. "It's all right."
But it's not.
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Please don't think that's what I meant, that isn't what I meant...
Doc shakes his head.
"S'just that he's...I ain't sure how much it's my place t'talk 'bout his life, what's proper t'tell but all I can say is that he's been where I was. He lost his wife, he's lost a lot of his friends...he's been there."
That doesn't make not telling her right but he knows that already, he's said that and now he's just making things worse, it seems. It's not okay.
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Just stop talking.
"I'm not attacking your friendship with Jack. I'm sure you had good reasons for why you talked to him about it. I trust you."
The words almost hurt as they leave her lungs.
"But you can't answer me when I ask why you didn't talk to me about it. What reason did you have for keeping it from me?
"'I don't know'," she scoffs, trying to keep the frustration from her soft voice. "After everything...
"...We're right back where we started."
And it hurts to acknowledge that.
"...We did move too fast. I should have listened to Ben, I should have taken things slower, but I just wanted so bad... I can't... God, I'm so stupid. I should have listened to him."
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"Y'aint stupid, Katherine. You're one of the smartest women I know, so don't go sayin' you're stupid."
Doc swallows, hard, as he tries to think of what to say.
"I didn't talk to you about it because...because I didn't want you to feel guilty. I didn't want you to feel like you ruined my life because I made the choice to leave New York and come back here instead. I didn't want you to think...that me bein' sad about sayin' goodbye was in any way your fault or doin'. 'Cause it wasn't. It ain't. I just...I didn't know how to say that so I didn't say a word."
He bows his head and closes his eyes, exhaling gently.
"I was stupid for not trustin' you to believe me if I said it wasn't your fault. I just didn't want y'to be upset. I hate seein' you upset."
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"Tell me--"
She closes her eyes briefly, before finishing the request:
"--And, please. Be honest.
"Would you have made the same choice, were we to never have met?"
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Eventually, he nods.
"You remember what I told you, that night when I was doin' my mendin' downstairs? 'Bout ridin' like hell 'cross the desert and really living?"
And what else he said that night?
"I know it's my choice...but sometimes y'gotta look at the paths you got open and make a sensible decision."
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Slowly, she nods.
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Doc nods again.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
"I never would have stayed."
Nevermind he likely would have never made it back at all.
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Her blue eyes are large, full of concern.
"...They were your family."
She looks down, trying to gather her thoughts. She knows she has said this all before, but...
"When my momma died, my--my daddy, he cried for weeks," she whispers, pulling the memories back through her mind's eye. "Wouldn't eat. Wouldn't sleep. Couldn't--couldn't look at me for months. Said I reminded him too much of her."
She takes a deep breath, shaking her head.
"I don't--I don't know what it's like, losing a wife, Doc. But I know what it's like losing a family. I wanted nothing more than to take my daddy's pain away. I'd put on her clothes, or her makeup. I'd stand in the kitchen and try to roll biscuits, way she used to.
"And then, when he died... Th-there isn't anything more in the world that I want than to just... just get the chance to see him. Just once more. Just one more time."
I want him to be proud of me.
She lifts her eyes back to his face, and there's almost a hint of anger in her expression as she fights back all of her emotions.
"Maybe you got stuck in a whirlwind, and you liked the taste of dust in your mouth, and the weight of iron in your hands, and how you were always pushing for the sunset on the horizon, hoping you'd run fast enough, praying your horse wouldn't give out. But I know you loved your wife, and your baby. I know you did. And I can't..."
Another shake of her head, and she swallows hard.
"I can't imagine you being okay with... with never seeing them again! I can't be okay with you never seeing them again!"
She weasels her way out from his arms, taking a few steps backwards, out into the long corridor.
"I can't replace them. I don't think you want me to, but you're talking about closure and funerals and doing it for us and I... I'm not okay with this.
"Any of this."
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Doc shakes his head.
"And there ain't a day go by that I don't wish I could go back to Tallapoosa and see my mama or my pa, but they don't want to see me. I'm dead t'them, Kate. They may not be dead to me, but I'm dead to them. You can't...you can't live the live I do and not be able to ignore that pain, 'cause if you let it sink in your bones you'll run yourself into the ground without even realizin' it."
Her words sink in, then.
"I don't want you to replace them. That was never...no."
He's reminded of Teja's suggestion - go back out his door, and live ten years to catch up to her timeline, so that they could be together without bending of the door and the universe, and he wonders if maybe he should just go. Leave and not come back. Ignore that door for ten years and wait, until he can make it to Green Lake around the Fourth of July, when the summer Texas heat...
I'm not okay with this. Any of this.
He's quiet, a moment or two, eyes on her, before he speaks again.
"Well then what are we gonna do?"
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She pauses, catching her breath. Her heart is beating a million miles per second, and her chest is heaving with the effort of just keeping it inside her ribcage without letting her lungs explode.
"You can still see them. You can still be with them! You can go back, and see if your boy is in a good school, or if her new man is treating her right, or if they need money, or you."
Her voice echoes off the walls, and she reins it back in with a choked little gasp.
"And I don't want to keep you from that. I wouldn't. I'd... hell, I'd make you go," she murmurs, stepping further back from where he's standing. "But ... I don't want to wonder where you are, Doc. I don't... I don't want to..."
You will not cry, Katherine. You will not cry.
"I don't want to wait, wondering if you're there, if you're gonna tell me this time. If I'm gonna have to guess where you been, or ignore the smell of perfume on your clothes, or bear the looks of people like Wade when I find out they know more about you than I do."
Her back hits the stalls on the opposing side of the barn, and only then does she stop moving away from him. Though, her eyes have never left his face, and they're staring at him with a hurt and a concern and a fear that only peek through the growing haze of frustration.
"Wasn't fair of you, Doc. But it's not fair of me, either, to expect you to..."
Talk to me. Trust me. Keep your word.
(He's an outlaw. He'll always choose the trail.)
'what are we gonna do?'
She purses her lips together, shaking her head a little before she drops her eyes to her boots.
"I think I'm going to go home."
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If she can go home, that means that her door is back.
Which means the reason she was here...
(The Landlord making her wait until the truth came out? So she could go back to Green Lake knowing what the right choice was? It's your fault.)
She's got a friend back there, a gentleman...
Probably treats her better than you do.
Doc rubs slowly at the back of his neck with one hand, eyes on the ground in the space between the two of them. He swallows, hard, pushing his emotions down and burying them in his stomach. Cold. He's so damn cold and it's not the weather.
Do you want me to come to Green Lake, in ten years time?
Or do you want me to stay the hell away from you.
"Y'gonna come back or am I gonna have t'go out and find y'gain in ten years?"
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(You never told him. You never said a word, and now your door is back, and you both know why.)
She thinks of a brown eagle feather, tucked away in a little leather journal, back in her home in Green Lake. She thinks of a schoolhouse, whose roof does not leak, and whose desks do not lean or wobble. She thinks of a lake, with a little rowboat filled with onions, and the glimmer of fireworks off its glassy top...
She isn't supposed to be here. This place. Milliways. It makes things seem normal when they are not.
It surprises her when she hears him speak, and even more so when she hears his words. She's startled he even has to ask, but the last two words of his question are the ones that really baffle her.
"...What?"
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"We're 'bout ten years apart," he says. "Your world and mine. I know the bar brings folk from all over in together, but maybe if...maybe if I went out and waited until I'd caught up to you...we could be together and it wouldn't be so strange. Wouldn't have to worry 'bout the timeline so much."
His hand is still on the back of his neck, and his breath is coming slow and even. He's upset - his stomach in knots and twists, heart beating with a dull thud in his chest - but his voice is steady enough.
"I just...maybe it would help..."
If I could make it ten years without going back...maybe she'd realize I was tellin' the truth.
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"Oh, god damn it, Josiah!" she murmurs, her voice tight and watery as her hands travel to her hair. She turns away from him, doing nothing more than trying to catch her breath and still the pounding of her heart.
He would wait for me.
"What are you gonna do for ten years, all by yourself, huh?" she asks, voice cracking over the lump in her throat. Her brow is creased deeply when she turns back to face him. "How could you even consider..."
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He lets that hang between them for a few seconds, before he closes his eyes and rubs at them hastily, in an effort to quell the urge for them to water. "I don't know. I'm just...I'm tryin' to make this right and I'm doin' a shit job of it but I don't want to give up."
I don't want to give up on us.
"And maybe that ain't fair t'you, to be so damn stubborn but I..."
He trails off with a shrug and looks up at her.
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She shrinks under his eyes when he looks up, clutching the cuff of her jacket like a little kid waiting for punishment.
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